Again; Stress and diet. How to use food to lower your stress-levels. Interview with Kirsten Chick

 As I'm still ridiculously busy with the upcoming exciting thing I can't yet talk about ;)

This week I bring you the conversation I had with nutritional therapist Kirsten Chick a few years ago.

Not only is Kirsten a nutritional therapist, She's a public speaker, educator, podcast host of not one but TWO podcasts and author of "Nutrition brought to life". In other words, she's incredibly knowledgable about all things food related.

We spent a solid hour talking about the effects of stress, and diet, on the human body.

We talk about the physical effects of stress on the human body, including on digestion and weightmanagement.
Whether food can cause an increase in the levels of stress.
Which foods help with stress-management and which nutrients to look out for, and what they do.
The benefit of taking 10-15 minutes screenbreaks, and other time-outs, every day.
Why eating whilst working is not the same as eating whilst stepping away from the computer.
The benefit of eating a bit more slowly.

And many, MANY other things.

It's a  fascinating chat with tonnes of wisdom and advice for all of us but especially powerful for women with young children. After all, stress-management can have such a huge impact on the health and happiness of you, and those around you, and Kirsten gives you a LOT of "easy to follow and implement" bits of information.

You can find Kirsten's "Nutrition brought to life" on Amazon and Waterstone's.
You can listen to the Nutrition Brought to Life podcast here.
Her currently active podcast (IHCAN) can be found here
 Of course Kirsten is on Instagram, YouTube , and Facebook.

As always; HPNB still only has 5 billing cycles.

So this means that you not only get 3 months FREE access, no obligation!

BUT, if you decide you want to do the rest of the program, after only 5 months of paying $10/£8 a month you now get FREE LIFE TIME ACCESS! That's $50 max spend, in case you were wondering.

Though I'm not terribly active on  Instagram and Facebook you can follow us there. I am however active on Threads so find me there!

And, of course, you can always find us on our YouTube channel if you like your podcast in video form :)

Visit healthypostnatalbody.com and get 3 months completely FREE access. No sales, no commitment, no BS.

Email peter@healthypostnatalbody.com if you have any questions, comments or want to suggest a guest/topic   
 


Playing us out this week; "Just a breath" by NOVVA

Transcript

Peter: 0:00

Hey, welcome to the Healthy Postnatal Body Podcast with your postnatal expert, peter Lap, that, as always, will be me. This is the podcast for the 26th of March 2024. And I'm bringing you one from the vault today An interview I did with nutritional therapist Kirsten Chick in 2022. We're talking stress and foods and how to lower your stress levels using food. I love Kirsten. She is a nutritional therapist, a public speaker, educator, podcast host of two podcasts and author of a wonderful book called Nutrition Brought to Life, which I highly, highly recommend you get. It has a foreword by Hugh Fernie Whittingstall, so that shows you that you know it's a good book. I love Hugh Fernie Whittingstall, but he's a national treasure.

Peter: 0:46

We basically we talked about the physical effects of stress on the human body, including on digestion and weight management, whether food can cause an increase in the level of stress, and which foods help with stress management, which nutrients to look out for. All that sort of stuff and many, many items. Like I said, you're going to love this interview. So, without further ado, here we go. So we all know the effects stress has on the mind, but for some reason, we don't necessarily accept the effects stress has on the body. So just to kick us off. Can you talk us through the physical effects of stress on the body, if you don't mind?

Kirsten: 1:41

Yes, of course, and they're're well documented. So we should really be more aware of them than we have been. We've just been told, you know stress-related diseases. It sounds a bit woolly, it sounds a bit like we're making it up, but stress does have an actual physical impact, um, and we've all experienced it.

Kirsten: 1:58

So there's kind of like uh, sensations in the tummy are really common, where people might get butterflies. It might feel like excitement, it might be a nervous tummy, it might be, you know, running to the loo, or it might be the reverse. It might be constipation, so very real. Or heartburn, indigestion, so there's very real impacts on digestion. There's a reason for that. So that so if, for example, let's take the age-old example of you're walking through the jungle, you come across the saber-toothed tiger, um, you want to really direct your resources in to the most effective places, to dealing with the saber-toothed tiger. So digestion not a priority, so we literally shut it down. If you've just eaten, you might even kind of throw up or, you know, have to empty out your stomach or your colon either end. So you're free to deal with the thing at hand, whether it's a saber-toothed tiger or whatever it is. Don't think we were alive at the same time.

Kirsten: 3:04

Yeah, I think we're fine yeah, you know what I mean. So, um, so, yeah, it's. That's a very deliberate effect and it's similar on cognitive health as well. So the way our brains function. So at that time we don't need to necessarily be logically thinking things through or wondering what to have for dinner or having little internal debates with ourselves, those kinds of things that we do, making up stories, whatever. We need to be focused on that tiger. So we switch from the part of the brain that spends time weighing things up and thinking things through, learning new things, and we switch to the amygdala. The amygdala takes over, which is all about run away from threats, from fear, run towards things that are pleasurable. That's all the amygdala is concerned with. So everything else in the brain gets temporarily blunted, so it might, in the short term, both those things really effective. Another thing fertility isn't an issue then. So reproductive aspects of the body get downgraded as well and, of course, you get the things like the pumping heart.

Kirsten: 4:25

Um, the energy goes to the muscles that we might need for for fighting or running away, and away from any other muscles. Um, our vision gets really kind of tunneled vision. We want to focus just on the saber-toothed tiger. We don't want to be distracted by anything else. So very tunneled vision, maybe dry mouth because our secretions, as our digestive system gets switched off, various secretions dry up. So that's the dry mouth. So lots of different things clammy hands, temperature regulation changes, very real and deliberate changes to deal with that threat in that moment. And they're all brilliant changes as long as we bounce back from them as soon as the threat is no longer there is when they become long-term adaptions that they can have impacts on our health, our well-being, our day-to-day activity. So I talk a lot about stress resilience. We all get stressed. We all have um threats and traumas and stresses and niggles in our daily lives. But how easily can we reset after that and get all of those systems moving?

Peter: 5:39

sure no. So that sounds, that sounds brilliant, and indeed it's. It's all well and good. If you indeed have the tiger or something like that chasing you, then it's awesome to feel that way. I think we all accept that. You know. Indeed, work and life and all that sort of thing comes with a certain level of stress. But of course, we're now discovering and when I say we, I mean I'm talking about the we, as in mankind as a whole, lay people, so to speak we're now realizing that actually the food we eat causes stress upon the body in a way that, you know, the tiger used to that work kind of does. But it's fine if you say I need to manage work, but if the food you eat causes stress and causes those effects on the body, it becomes a much, much bigger problem, isn't it?

Kirsten: 6:35

yeah, and the two can add, kind of combine as well. So there can be foods that cause a bit of stress, inflammation in our digestive tracts, that maybe actually just cause mild symptoms or they're a mild problem, but when we're stressed the problem becomes much worse. Then it becomes a never decreasing cycle of the food putting stress on the body, stress making us more sensitive to the food and so on. So that can be tricky to navigate and there's a difference between kind of food allergies, where somebody has a specific allergic response to food, and food sensitivities, which is more what I'm talking about here. There are crossovers with the two, but with a sensitivity sometimes it can. You know, there could be a food. I'll give you an example.

Kirsten: 7:34

So I'm sensitive to gluten. I don't have celiac disease so, and I don't have a gluten allergy. But I know that if I eat too much gluten in one sitting or if I eat gluten every day for a week, my system isn't happy at all and if I'm stressed then that will happen much more quickly. But if life's great and I'm really relaxed maybe I'm on holiday I seem to be able to get away with eating a bit more gluten and it's fine because my body can cope with it a bit more, and a lot of that is to do with the particular impact that both stress and, for me, gluten but food sensitivities generally have on the body, and that's inflammation.

Kirsten: 8:26

Sensitivities generally have on the body and that's inflammation. So, um, the lower the levels of inflammation, um, the more we can deal with things. And, of course, when I'm stressed, when I'm relaxed and maybe on holiday, um, I don't feel like there's, you know, a saber-toothed tiger sitting in the room with me, so my digestive system is going to work much better. Anyway, I'm going to have more enzymes breaking that food down and other things easing the way.

Peter: 8:49

Yeah, that's interesting because I think a lot of people can relate to that. I have several clients and members of Healthy Plus Natural Body that always tell me that when I'm on holiday I get away with doing things I can't get away with when I'm at home. I sleep better on holiday. Well, that sounds obvious. Almost right, I sleep better on holiday. I can indeed eat more food, I get on better with the kids even though they're the same children and everything is just a little bit easier. And everything is just a little bit easier and therefore, when they come back from a holiday like that, they are completely rested.

Peter: 9:30

However, I'm Dutch and it's been a while as my dog barks in the background. Admittedly it's been a while, but when I went back to Holland to visit family, it doesn't feel like a holiday. Holland to visit family, it doesn't feel like a holiday. And therefore that background level of stress is kind of still there. And, like you said, when you start adding things together, the background level of stress is like idling your engine at 15 miles an hour or something like that. It's all manageable and it feels okay, but you're still moving forward.

Peter: 10:05

and if you add the wrong foods, so to speak, aircraft, wrong food, and by wrong foods I mean wrong foods for you, I don't mean specifically don't ever have a donut, um, then it becomes a lot more difficult and also the engine goes up to 30, 40, 50, 50 miles an hour, especially if, like you said, you keep eating that way. So what foods are you for stress management perspective? We kind of know that sugar isn't great for us, and by sugar I mean added sugars, but what foods help lower that? What foods help with the stress?

Kirsten: 10:44

Yeah, and it's really important to focus on that, because if we focus too much on what to avoid and what we're taking out, suddenly everything seems really miserable and punishing and restrictive and that just adds to the stress really. So we need to do that a little bit, but we also need to add things in, and there are specific nutrients and foods that I definitely look to add in, partly because they help calm the adrenals down. The adrenals send out our stress hormones, yeah, um, and our nervous system, so they help to calm those down, so they helped us to become more stress resilient and partly because they can help with things like I mean, you mentioned sugar. So sugar isn't evil. It's when we're having a lot of sugar or you know, sugar that's too frequent and it's so frequent or so much that it's creating a situation approaching insulin resistance, which will then create inflammation. So there are certain nutrients that help to balance blood sugar, help to support insulin pathways. So I'm going to add those nutrients into the mix as well and if we're doing that also, also if our blood sugar is balanced, we don't get mood swings, um, so again, we're a little bit more stress resilient. So the key I'll talk, I'll talk about nutrients, then I'll talk about some foods, because obviously you know if I say vitamin b3, that's not going to mean anything to anybody.

Kirsten: 12:24

So, um so, in terms of in terms of minerals, the ones that I'm looking for in particular are magnesium and zinc. They're particularly good at calming everything down, relaxing everything, taking the edge off the stress hormone response. Um also really good for? Um. Magnesium has been shown to be good for calming anxiety and panic attacks and depression and all sorts of things. Um, in certain situations, if they're there because of magnesium deficiency. Now, both those things magnesium and zinc you can get in nuts and seeds, um magnesium also green leafy vegetables, um zinc also in things like chip peas and also chicken and lamb and bee. The problem with both of those is there's not so much in the soil anymore. The soil is quite deficient and also when we're stressed, we lose a lot of magnesium. We weed it out.

Kirsten: 13:29

So sometimes it's it's necessary. Well, often actually, I find it's necessary to add in magnesium supplements um and then, but that can be done in a number of ways, because some of the cheaper ones, like magnesium oxide, they're just laxatives. They'll irritate the gut, um not really the most helpful. Um, there are gentler, more effective forms of magnesium to take. But if somebody's really not great, if it's really affecting their digestion, then epsom salt baths are fantastic and other kinds of magnesium baths. The magnesium comes in through the skin. There are some really lovely kind of having a bath in itself is quite relaxing If you're water conscious. A foot bath, so just a handful of epsom salts or magnesium salts in a foot bath Really soothing, really relaxing. Makes you stop for 20 minutes. We're not very good at that, are we?

Peter: 14:25

Yeah, no, this is funny enough. I was talking with one of my clients about exactly that this morning, but we were talking about face masks and I know I'm a middle-aged white guy and therefore I don't use them right Because I'm of that generation. Now we don't do skincare right Navia aftershave, that's as sensitive as I get, so to speak. But one of my friends is eight, nine years younger than I am and therefore he's very millennial and he's much more into that stuff. And he always says to me he has a better job than I do, so to speak. He works 60, 70, 80, 90 hours a week and he says his 15 minutes a day, so to speak, is putting a face mask on because lovely, not because necessarily, because it does wonder for his skin. He said, but these things take 15 minutes to dry out. He said I cannot move for 15 minutes so he's putting like a mud pack on yeah, something like that.

Peter: 15:20

um, and and he's so. It's like he said it's not so much the nutrients, he doesn't mind what it is, it's just as a guy in his position, so to speak. And I feel the same. When you say, sit in the bath for 15, 20 minutes, I can't, that's not showering?

Kirsten: 15:41

Yeah no, my husband can't either. No, exactly.

Peter: 15:43

It's just impossible.

Kirsten: 15:44

I can sit in a bath all day, but my wendy, my, my wife is the same.

Peter: 15:51

Unless you give me like a rubber ducky or a submarine to play with, I cannot, I can't switch off for that long. It just does not happen, which is why I have dogs, right, so I take my dogs for a walk and that does the same thing for me. But it's because we are arguing we were discussing this morning about the effects of do the nutrients in the bath matter more, in this case the bath, because you mentioned the bath doesn't matter more, or is it more the benefit of just switching off for 20 minutes? It's a potato-potato sort of situation. I think they're both probably useful, but it's the highlighting the importance of stopping for 10, 15 minutes, I think, is probably what the main takeaway would be there for me, rather than anything specific.

Kirsten: 16:47

Yeah, totally agree with you. None of us really stop enough. And I try. You know I'm in consultations all day or I teach all day, and especially when I'm on consultations or I'm having research on admin day, it's very easy for me to just be at the computer screen and I have to force myself to take screen breaks. And this I give this advice to people. This is one of my ways of actually doing things is I give other people advice and then I feel I have to do it. So one of my tips is to just um, in screen breaks, either do some gentle exercises, like I might do some squats or some lunges or some press-ups against the wall, or I might just open the window and stick my head out for 10 minutes and just look at the horizon or feel the wind on my face.

Kirsten: 17:42

It doesn't have to be an active thing, um, but it's whatever I feel I need at that moment. If I feel I need to move, if everything's stagnating, I can just take that 10 minutes to do some movement. I can even just switch on the radio and dance around the kitchen. If I feel like I need headspace or some kind of space, I can just stare out the window. But I have to actively do that and not just carry on working.

Peter: 18:07

Yes, and that's interesting, because that reminded me of something.

Kirsten: 18:10

Because I used to have a property.

Peter: 18:11

Before all this right, I used to be a project manager in telecoms and all this stuff, and I did the typical project manager thing I had my lunch whilst I worked. For that is the way of the world, and you get judged if you don't. If you make a certain amount of money, then it's oh, you're better, you better be behind that screen for the 10 12 hours a day. We expect you to sit there and it makes you a very unhappy individual. Um, from my personal experience but I'm guessing right that it doesn't it almost doesn't really matter what you eat. If you put yourself in a stressful situation, you can have the healthiest salad in the world. But if you're still focused on, I need to get this done. I need to get this done. Like you said, if you're stressed, you pee out the magnesium and all that sort of stuff.

Kirsten: 19:05

So the healthy salad. It's probably why you can digest it.

Peter: 19:08

Yeah, so the healthy salad, because it becomes a lot less healthy if you have it whilst you're still working. I take it.

Kirsten: 19:17

Absolutely yeah. So this is. You said before, you haven't read my book. I don't believe you because I read it, or we're on the same wavelength anyway because I write about this a lot, um, but, yeah, I talk a lot about mindful eating. So, um, because it, it triggers, um, you're absolutely right, you can.

Kirsten: 19:37

If you're sat there eating the salad at your desk and you're not paying any attention to it, all, it's going to hit your stomach. Your stomach's going to not know what's really hit it and not be ready for it. Um, your digestive system's not going to be switched on. Um, you probably get a bit of indigestion. Um, at best, you probably won't absorb the nutrients as well as you might. Um, if, if that food is going to upset your digestion in any way, it's certainly going to do it. Then, however, if you just spend a few seconds, even just thinking about what you're eating and looking at it, smelling it, paying attention when you're eating it, um, how does it taste, how does it feel, what are the textures like?

Kirsten: 20:28

Applying mindfulness to eating does, um, a number of things. So, firstly, it switches on your digestive system. It, your brain, gets all of these signals and says right, there's food here. We better turn the digestion on, and also because it's a mindfulness practice. Whenever we bring our attention to our senses, our nervous system gets a signal to calm down any stress in the body. And because we're calming down stress again, that enables us to switch the digestive system on. Um, and it also means we get to actually enjoy our food and I'm I'm old-fashioned I think we should get pleasure from our food. I think it should be something that kind of adds joy to our life. Um, so that, yeah, that's really important, but we often don't have time for it. Um, it may be because we're working, it may be because we like to be sociable and we're sitting around a table of family.

Kirsten: 21:32

So I often suggest just three mouthfuls of mindfulness at the beginning of the meal just to trigger those processes and then to just get on with whatever and maybe check back in every now and again every kind of dozen mouthfuls. Check back in and do another mindful one.

Peter: 21:51

That's a really interesting one because that just highlighted to me I'm Dutch and, like everyone in Holland, I'm an atheist. That is just the way of the world. We're not a particularly religious sort of thing. However, when you say three mouthfuls, or a bit of mindfulness, a bit of slowing down, most cultures, you know, they have their little prayer before dinner, and I only know that from American television, to be fair, but that is the, you know. Thanks for the meal we're about to receive and all that sort of stuff. I've watched enough Malcolm in the middle to be able to quote it. It is. That is kind of what you're talking about, isn't it? It's just sitting down, taking a minute or two slowing down, and then I am going to eat, I'm going to prepare for a meal. Now, just tell my brain indeed, because I know some people um will be listening to this and they're going. This all sounds a bit woolly. Turning your digestive system on that. That is not the thing.

Kirsten: 22:50

Your digestive system always works yeah, no, it's actually a thing. Yeah, there's a technical. Yeah, no, not to you. So, those people out there, there's a technical name for it that you can read in any anatomy and physiology book. It's called the cephalic phase of digestion. So that's C-E-P-H-A-L-I-C, and cephalic means to do with the mind, so it's using the mind to switch on digestion. So, yeah, any cynics out there?

Peter: 23:19

Yeah, well, because I always get the emails I always get wow, that's not how this. And like, funny enough, most people that are cynics about this stuff are people that really are strong believers in the mind-muscle connection that I talk about every now and again. You know, bodybuilders use it a lot. When you do a bicep curl, you think about your bicep as you're doing the curl. You get better responses.

Peter: 23:42

Everybody just accepts that this is the way it is with superficial muscles. I think we are very keen. When I say we, I mainly talk about people in the UK and the US, because other cultures will immediately…. I usually get emails from Hong Kong and all that and then, oh Pete, that's just not how it works at all, but it's. We view any internal muscles, so to speak, and by that I mean digestive system, I mean our cardiovascular system, things that work automatically without us having to think about it. We kind of see that as background sort of stuff and that doesn't sting anyways. But what you're saying? That if you slow down and you think about it, it makes sense that, let's say, your body prioritizes it more. I can forget about work for a minute and therefore I can more focus on because I can only do so many things. Like I said, I'm a middle-aged white guy.

Kirsten: 24:46

I can do one thing, two things at best at a time. Yeah, absolutely. And there are certain triggers to set these processes in motion. So another benefit of eating a bit more slowly is chewing. If you're chewing your food and you think, well, okay, if I chew my food, it's going to break it down a bit more.

Kirsten: 25:02

We all know that It'll hurt digestion, digestion but actually it also triggers peristalsis and it's made me think of that, because peristalsis is the, the contractions through the muscular wall of the digestive tract. So all the way, the whole tunnel, from the mouth all the way through the stomach, the intestines, all the way to the anus, and it's surrounded by a layer of muscle that keeps contracting um to move food through, keep moving through, a bit like a snake kind of eating something, and peristalsis is triggered by chewing. So I give this advice to people with constipation a lot just chew your food more and it actually it helps that movement um. So yeah, it's good to think about it as an inner muscle, because a huge aspect of our digestive tract is muscular um, yeah, because that's funny, because the way we think about chewing our food is indeed, it slows you down.

Peter: 26:09

But this is all. If you want to lose weight, the first thing, who is that hypnotist? Again, the I can make you thin guy oh, terence McKenna is that him, paul McKenna, I think Paul.

Kirsten: 26:20

McKenna sorry, that's the one, my McKenna's and I thought to myself I can't go Paul O'Grady under the bus.

Peter: 26:28

He's the baddest he don'ts home guy. He was always. I can make you quit smoking, I can make you fit. And in his book, which I had to sit through, it's a terrible read. Anybody listening. Don't buy the book.

Peter: 26:44

It is chew your food 25 times. Uh, it's always what he says, but the reason he says it is not for the reason you said it is because if you put crisps in your mouth and you chew them 25 times, you'll be put off crisps for at least the rest of the day, because all you're left with is salt and oil, and it's not a particularly pleasant experience chewing a crisp 25 times, whereas what you're talking about is chewing your food properly, which is indeed what I was always told when I was younger. Chew your food properly, because otherwise it gets stuck in the stomach, is what my dad always used to say. But it is, yeah, indeed, to to help with digestion, to slow things down and to help your body move things along. So it's a completely different, uh, different approach that you're talking about, even though you're saying this and you will taste it more as well.

Kirsten: 27:37

I mean, maybe you know if you've got something nice not not crisps that will just turn to horrible mush in your mouth after a while. But if you're eating something really nice and tasty and you actually spend a few seconds actually tasting it and really focusing on how nice it tastes, you're going to get more pleasure from that meal but also your brain will register that you've actually eaten it and you'll feel satisfied by your meal more quickly. So, um, kind of a halfway between the two. So that actually that has also been linked to helping with with weight management programs, because you're you're not so likely to overeat if you're really actually tasting and enjoying your food yes, exactly because I remember I dated the girl.

Peter: 28:27

It's a long time ago because I've been married a long time, um, but I used to date a girl who could have one tiny piece of dark chocolate and she would put it on her tongue and it stayed there for like 20 minutes and that thing would dissolve and she'd be so delighted and everybody else said I can understand, I don't understand how you can have one tiny bit. And she always said I don't need to have a bar, not from a weight management perspective. But she just said I buy really, really good chocolate and she spent a fortune on good chocolate as, in an outrageous amount of it, had to be like handmade Belgian stuff or whatever it was yeah, but I bet it lasted a long time.

Kirsten: 29:06

Oh god, yes, because she had it.

Peter: 29:08

Relatively speaking, it's not even a square right when you buy those those intense flavors as well.

Kirsten: 29:15

They they make us feel satisfied more quickly too. So it's going to satisfy you and and kind of stop your appetite a lot quicker than milk chocolate oh, absolutely.

Peter: 29:27

Yes, well, milk chocolate comes in a bar. You have to eat the bar, that is just the rule. Yeah, milk chocolate. Um, but it's interesting because what you're saying, because you mentioned this earlier. Right, I'll pedal back a little bit. When you say, um, we don't necessarily have a lot of time to slow down and eat or at least we think we don't but it's something that I used to hammer on a lot it's the food industry, and by the food I mean the people selling us food. They are kind of the only industry that tells us that we don't have time for food.

Peter: 30:01

It is the most important thing I always think it's the most important decision we make every day is what we have, what we put in our body, and I don't mean that from a should we have beef or chicken tonight? I mean for health purposes. What should I have for dinner today? It's the biggest decision we make, bigger than exercise. I'll tell everybody this. But the food industry is very keen on telling us yeah, you don't have time to think about food. Even mindful chef, which is one of those for american listeners out there, they send food boxes to your house and you cook. Even they are very keen on that. Now, you don't have time for to do this, to figure this out yourself, um, but that is kind of the completely the wrong approach to take, isn't it? It's that, take 20, and I'm not talking meal planning.

Kirsten: 30:51

I'm just talking about being aware of what you're eating and how your body's responding to it and all that sort of yeah, and the amount of people I speak to who just they just want to be able to go into a supermarket and trust that what they're being sold is good for them and providing all of their nutritional needs.

Kirsten: 31:10

They don't want to have to read the labels to check. They don't want to have to think about it any further than that. Because we have a lot of responsibilities in life. Communities have been broken up over time. We all live a million miles away from our families and so on. We don't, we don't have those kind of like small village. Well, some people do, but a lot of people don't.

Kirsten: 31:33

Um, so instead of you know, when the roof leaks, instead of the whole community coming together to fix it, we have to kind of remortgage and it's all on an individual shoulder. So there's a lot that we have to think about as an individual all of the time. So a lot of people just don't want to have to think about that. But you're right, it's one of the most important things and if we could, we can simplify it. We can make that process really really simple. So it's and the more we do something as well, the more something becomes a habit we actually use a part of the brain that takes less energy, so it's much easier to do that. It's much easier to just throw together a simple meal from scratch than it is to think about what processed foods, to go down to the shop to buy.

Peter: 32:26

Well, that's the thing, isn't it? If you think about your health from a holistic point of view, um, and you think of cooking and shopping and all that sort of stuff as as one thing, yes, okay, you might have to learn a recipe here or there, uh, but once you've got the recipe down or kind of, then you're kind of fine. It's a lot quicker for me to run through the fruit veg aisle, the deli section and the butcher section and then get out of the supermarket Then it is starting in the ready meal section thinking about am I buying the tesco lasagna? Am I buying the tesco finest lasagna? Am I buying the, the other? What's the? What's the?

Kirsten: 33:14

charlie biggins. That's the one, charlie big.

Peter: 33:17

Exactly that's the one I thought about, because each I just ate quit for a lasagna. So that must be good lasagna and it's not. But but it's again it's. And that actually takes me a lot longer than just buying I don't know some mince and some tomato sauce and some pasta sheets and all that sort of thing does. Once I figured out how to actually make a lasagna from scratch from scratch, and it's significantly cheaper. A lasagna from scratch. From scratch, and it's significantly cheaper. So what is the what is? With regards to what you're eating and all that sort of stuff, am I right in saying because I've told several people this and I may not be wrong, but I have you on so I might as well ask when you have a steak and spinach with chips, is that fundamentally different from steak and spinach with, I don't know, a salad on the side, as in? Do the chips have an effect on the body that has any sort of meaningful impact with regards to digestion, with regards to absorbing nutrients, with regards to stress and all that sort of stuff?

Kirsten: 34:25

Yeah, you're going to get my favorite answer here. It depends. Yeah, there's. There's no kind of like simple answer to that, but there's well, I guess for some people, the um. Some people aren't great at eating high protein with high carb together, so it might give them a bit of indigestion. But um, so that there's whole kind of um eating strategies around uh, food combining, for example, where you keep um high proteins like meat and carbohydrates separate. Not everyone needs to do that, but some people find that really helpful. Um, you've also got um. I mean, what are you frying the potatoes in?

Kirsten: 35:07

because if you're frying them in vegetable oils, then you're going to have all kinds of pro-inflammatory and carcinogenic nutrient substances going into your body that your body then has to deal with and that's going to take resources away from everything else yeah, exactly yes, yeah, um, if you are somebody who has, um certain digestive issues so some people with irritable bowel syndrome, for example, some people with other digestive issues um, having lots of vegetables and salad may be way too much for your gut and that may cause problems. So for those people, having more carbohydrate and fewer vegetables might actually be a better option for them. So it's all very individual and it's really. I encourage people to feel their way through nutrition a lot, so it's good to kind of understand what we know so far with science, which changes all of the time, because bodies are really complex and we don't fully understand them yet.

Kirsten: 36:17

Um, but to apply that information individually, to tailor it to ourselves, by kind of trusting our bodies and trusting the feelings that our bodies are giving us.

Peter: 36:29

Yeah, so do you tell your clients and I take it you do Zoom consultations and all that sort of stuff right? Just for anybody listening to this yeah, all over the world. Yeah, exactly Because a lot of people listen to this, I think how about I don't stay in? Is it Brighton?

Kirsten: 36:44

back of the woods, yeah, just outside, because a lot of people listen to this. I think I don't stay in Brighton.

Peter: 36:46

back of the woods, yeah, just outside of Brighton, yeah, so yeah, I know I have people in America, people in Europe. Yeah, yeah, so they might well. So do you advocate them having like a food journal? I'm not talking about MyFitnessPal, I'm not tracking calories, necessarily but a food journal for feelings of mental well-being and physical well-being after eating things?

Kirsten: 37:12

yeah, I. I frequently do um if I think it's going to be useful yes um for people um, some people find that process really quite stressful actually. So in that situation I wouldn't um especially people that have you know any kind of um, kind of um. I suppose you'd call it eating distress, eating disorders yeah, disorder eating and all that yeah, that kind of thing I wouldn't yeah I probably wouldn't do that and a lot of people who haven't been kind of formally diagnosed with disordered eating are somewhere along.

Kirsten: 37:52

You know, heading towards that or floating around them would just find it too stressful to do that, but for some people it's really useful and it's quite an eye-opener for them. Um, because again, we're not always completely at present with what we're eating and how we're eating it.

Kirsten: 38:09

So actually it can be quite a surprise sometimes to write down exactly what we are eating and when and what an impact that might be having. Um, so, yeah, it can be really useful. Um, and if we're looking for things like food sensitivities and that kind of thing, then it can be really helpful as well, because often the sensation or the symptom arising from that isn't immediate. It might be a couple of hours later or even the next day. So a food diary will really help to see patterns with that, rather than just saying well, I ate bread this morning and it was fine.

Peter: 38:50

Yes, because that's exactly it. I mean I am fine with it took me a while to figure out that I am fine with certain types of bread, so to speak, but certain rolls and I won't name the supermarket that I wouldn't buy them from certain types of white rolls I just can't eat, Because every single time I have the same reaction and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was causing that. Because it wasn't immediate. It wasn't like I had this. I now have heartburn. It was just I feel crap the following morning, but I didn't do anything. Classically wrong as in I don't drink all that much. It was hardly ever me being hungover. Classically wrong, as in I don't drink all that much. It was hardly ever me being hung over. It wasn't me having like a food hangover. In the classic, I had the dominoes right, if you haven't. Hardly anyone feels better after having eaten a large dominoes pizza let's just throw that out there.

Peter: 39:36

That is just the way it is.

Peter: 39:37

It's fine to have one, but you pay the price uh, and you just decide whether that's worth it or not. But I could. But I could have a bacon roll from a certain supermarket and just the following day I'd feel terrible. And yet if I bought a similar roll from another supermarket I'd be completely fine. It just turns out I can't pop into that supermarket to buy a roll anymore. The only way I could figure that out for myself was writing down, just for a week or so, just what I had, not to keep track of all the food I had in the like, I said, the MyFitnessPal of weight loss or weight management sort of way, as in oh, look at your plate, it's disgraceful. But more in a why do I feel the way I feel?

Peter: 40:22

sort of way and what effect do things have on my body? I had one client who just had to look at an apple and she started to bloat. But it's in the same way that you're saying people with IBS and salads. If they start to up their fiber intake to a rather drastic level, that can cause some real difficulties. To a rather drastic level that can cause some real difficulties. But if you don't know that it's the salad causing you trouble, it's a difficult conversation to have with people. It's the thing that we've always been told, or my generation has always been told. Salads are healthy, burgers are bad. And if you then go, I have a bit of an idea salads are bad for me.

Kirsten: 41:05

No, they can't be because salads are good for everybody. Yeah, it can be really difficult sometimes. It's a relief for people because they've just been forcing it and forcing it and forcing it, thinking well, it can't be this. And when I actually say, actually it may be that it's it's a real relief they that they can stop forcing something down that they weren't enjoying and didn't want anyway.

Peter: 41:24

Yeah, Especially with regards to diagnosis. I was talking to someone two, three weeks ago. I did a podcast interview on neurodivergence, autism, ADHD and all that sort of stuff and what that lady was saying I think her name was Catherine. I'm terrible with names, I'm sorry. I'm 150-odd episodes, I can't remember all this stuff. But like she was saying, it's just a diagnosis, it's just information.

Kirsten: 41:57

Yes.

Peter: 42:00

There's nothing good or bad, it is just information and then just deal with the information you have. So if you feel terrible and someone after eating something, it doesn't mean that the food is bad, it doesn't mean that the food is good, it just means that you have something to be aware of.

Kirsten: 42:15

What you do with that information is all down to you yeah, absolutely, and that takes the judgment out of it as well. I try and banish words good and bad, because you know, when we're describing food as good and bad, actually we're not really. We're judging ourselves.

Peter: 42:33

Yeah, because you immediately go. I have been bad for having had a Krispy Kreme donut and the problem is, of course, with a lot of that stuff, a lot of the bad foods. Air-cooked foods they're the hyperpalatable foods, right, they're foods that are designed for you to want, as often as possible, to hit every single pleasure center in the brain. I mean they're all amazing, let's be honest. I mean a Pringle is an amazing. It's an amazing thing. A pringle is just phenomenal, it's a feat of engineering.

Kirsten: 43:10

That's exactly what it is.

Peter: 43:12

It is. It's not food, but it's a feat of engineering. It is epically good and this is why, when I always tell people this and they I can't have them in my house, right, I am not. I don't have the willpower to have a can of pringles in my house, and not much my way through those, through those things, which is why I buy either a small can of pringles I I tend to like the paprika ones.

Peter: 43:34

I buy, I eat five. I throw the rest out because I want five pringles. Yeah, they don't sell them in packs of five, they just don't. And I know that if I have them in the back of a cupboard, I mean that works with children, but that doesn't work for me, because I bought the things and I put them in the back of the cupboard. I'm not hiding food around my house. I just make a conscious decision to pay one pound for five Pringles, not because I feel bad after, as in, I feel like I'm a bad person for having finished the tin of Pringles or a can or whatever you call them, but just because they have been made in such a way that it's not even willpower anymore.

Kirsten: 44:21

No, no, they're really feeding into your brain's addictive pathways. Yeah, exactly. It's exactly the same chemicals, exactly the same processes.

Peter: 44:31

Exactly, and because they are toxic, not necessarily nutritionally beneficial. They can be emotionally beneficial because someone's going to write in and go, but I feel better having it. I get it. I'm not saying, I'm just talking. The nutritional element from it is. I just choose to have five or six and that's when I get rid of the rest. Because, as I did an interview on food addiction a long, long time ago well over a year ago with someone, and they pointed out that Doritos has a machine in their factory that they spend 400,000 pounds on to make the perfect crunch Wow, the perfect crunch of a Dorito. Because if you buy everybody who's into tortilla chips will know this A Dorito is better than a Tesco tortilla chip. It just is.

Kirsten: 45:23

Wow that's incredible, isn't it? And that you know investing this much money because they know they've got people hooked into it. Oh sure, I've got a really good. You know people that come to me. A lot of people say that crisps are their thing whether it's. Doritos or other crisps, and it's the salty and the crunch that they're after. That's it. So I've got a really good substitute for that that's super quick and simple to make. Do you want to hear it?

Kirsten: 45:51

Yeah, of course it's tamari seeds which you can buy, but they're so quick and easy to make, so I use pumpkin seeds. You can use sunflower seeds. You just dry, fry them in a pan. So no oil, just pan, moderate heat, shake them a little bit. After a few minutes they start to pop. And when they start to pop, pour them in a bowl, sprinkle them with tamari or soya sauce. Just a little bit, doesn't need much. Gives them a good stir. Job done.

Kirsten: 46:23

You can keep them in a in a jar. They'll last a few days and they're really tasty. They're crunchy, they're salty and they contain now it's been at the back of my mind we started talking about nutrients, support your stress pathways, and then we got as far as magnesium and zinc. But there are others and you know pumpkin seeds are really good for zinc, for example. So these will contain zinc, um and magnesium, um. They'll also contain a couple of the b vitamins that you need.

Kirsten: 46:56

B vitamins are really important for calming the adrenals and the nervous system, um and helping to produce things like serotonin and dopamine and gaba. The neurotransmitters make you feel happier and calmer, so they'll they'll kind of help with that. I mean, if you want to get all of your b vitamins actually, or the ones relevant here. You need kind of like some green leafy vegetables as well, say, and some you know, some other kinds of vegetables, and actually b3 and b12. This is, I always find quite an interesting one. These things come up quite a lot. Vitamins b3 and b12 come up a lot for stress, for liver detoxification, enzymes, for hormonal balance as well for lots of other processes, and the main sources of them are meat and animal produce. You can't get B12 on a vegan diet, unfortunately.

Peter: 47:56

That's the one they always need to supplement, isn't it?

Kirsten: 48:00

Yeah, you can get B12 supplements and it's really important to if you're vegan, especially if you're vegan and stressed, or even if you're not vegan but you just don't eat animal produce very often it's really important. B3 is a little bit easier to get. Portobello mushrooms are a really good source of B3. But also it's not just meat but protein, whether it's animal protein or beans or tofu or whatever it is. That's the protein source.

Kirsten: 48:31

If you're having a little bit of that little enough, and through the day, that's gonna especially at breakfast, it's gonna stabilize your blood sugar if your blood sugar is stable, then that's going to help as well, and these tamari seeds contain protein as well, so they're going to be much more stabilizing to your blood sugar, whereas your crisps and um takes and things like that, they are engineered to give you a quick kick and then a crash, so you immediately want some more, whereas these are going to be more sustaining.

Peter: 49:05

So they're going to help take you out of that cycle.

Peter: 49:08

That sounds phenomenal. Just for everyone listening, I'll type that up and I'll throw it in the podcast description as a separate sort of recipe sort of thing, because that sounds just a ticket and before anybody intuitive eating dieticians, wise, are listening to this and they send me an email saying, yeah, but it's not a real crisp. I don't care, I, I don't need to hear it. I know that five pringles is fine. It's great to have a substitute, an alternative. When you don't want to go out and spend two pound 50 on five pringles, you can have some for that.

Kirsten: 49:43

Yeah absolutely, and you know, intuitive eating something different. Anyway, it's, it's, you know, it's. It's really where people really need to focus most of all on taking the judgment out before anything else, and actually that is crucial for all of us to take the judgment out, um, but for some people it just needs to be a really massive focus.

Peter: 50:06

Um, oh, yeah, absolutely, uh, yeah, I don't know, I don't mind intuitive eating, uh, dieticians at all. I I support the idea behind intuitive eating because it's kind of what we're talking about. If it feels genuinely feels good and healthy for you, yeah, knock yourself out. Pringles don't tend to fall into that category, other than for emotional maybe. Ah, it feels nice and it hits the spot in the moment. But I tend to get a lot of emails, as you know, again from people saying if you look for any alternative to Pringles, you are, by definition, doing it wrong and I think that's not necessarily correct.

Kirsten: 50:44

Yeah, I think it's good to have options.

Kirsten: 50:47

Yeah, exactly it's good to have options, and some of them food related and some of them not food related as well. So if I fancy a snack, sometimes I'll just go and have the snack. Sometimes I'll have a good think about what will. Actually, why do I want a snack? Is it because I'm actually hungry? Is it because I'm bored? Is it because I want something to give me some emotional support? What is it? And if I managed to get an answer to that, then I might have a range of options there which could include the snack. It could include a different snack. It could include, I know, listening to music or having a dance around my kitchen or, um, I don't know, listen, I listen to a podcast, something else. I've got options there and then, as long as we don't judge the options, so I might carry on having the snack over and over again.

Kirsten: 51:44

That's fine, but it's. I think it just to open it up and have choice is a really important thing yeah, no, exactly, that's exactly where I come in.

Peter: 51:52

I'm not, I'm just. I just don't want things to be my only choice. I like the idea of this. So, with regards to your book, of course, it would be a disgrace not to mention it. Nutrition Brought to Life Is this the sort of thing we'll find in there?

Kirsten: 52:08

Yeah, everything we've been talking about today and the whole approach I wanted. So it's a thorough book. It covers a lot. It covers a lot of aspects of nutrition.

Kirsten: 52:20

It's called Nutrition Brought to Life because that's a lot of the feedback I've had over the last 20 years from people is that when I talk about nutrition, I really bring it to life. When I talk about science, I bring it to life, I make it colourful, I describe things in ways that people go oh, I understand that now. So I try to get that as much into the book as possible. So it's really describing things in ways where people that people find accessible and can engage with. But at the same time, there's this continuing theme of actually this is about nourishing ourselves. This isn't just scientific information for the sake of it. Food is there to nourish us and it's about our relationship with food. So at the end of every chapter, whether it's a chapter on proteins or a chapter on inflammation or a chapter on the microbiome I think actually there were two or three chapters on the microbiome, so the gut and other microbes there's two or three chapters on stress, microbiome, so the gut, the guts and other microbes.

Kirsten: 53:21

There's two or three chapters on stress and the adrenals and hormones, liver, that. Whatever the chapter is, there's a section at the end which invites you to reflect, to try a couple of things, whether it might be a couple of different ways of doing things or a couple of new recipes. There's 50 recipes at the back, really simple, easy but delicious recipes at the back, um, so that you can really engage with the book and and tailor it. In fact, there's even a chapter at the end that helps you put the information together to tailor your own program. Um, so some people just use it as a recipe book.

Peter: 54:04

Actually, that's how it always goes skip through all the sciencey nonsense and just go which is absolutely fine, yeah and they might dip into that.

Kirsten: 54:13

Some people use it as a nutrition book and then maybe dip into the recipes it's. I've got a lot of nutrition students that find it really helpful too. But also you know friends, family, other people. You know people that aren't kind of, I suppose, nutrition lay people that have found it really useful. It's just gone into second edition, which I'm really happy about.

Peter: 54:37

Yeah, that's awesome, because I know a lot of people write books and they don't ever sell more than 10 and they have a garage full of books.

Kirsten: 54:45

Yeah, and it's difficult to sell books, you know I mean most publishers now. They don't do your marketing for you.

Peter: 54:53

No, it's true. That's very, very true. Or even if they do, they don't necessarily know what they're selling. And this is not knocking the publishers. It's difficult to have specialist knowledge on all that sort of stuff exactly.

Kirsten: 55:08

My publishers are wonderful. They're really amazing in lots of different ways, but they're very small, um, so I thought that was the reason, but no, I've since met people that are published, published, with penguin saying, oh no, I do all of my own publicity?

Peter: 55:22

Yes, and I've dealt with quite a few American. I've had quite a few American experts on, and they will say this self-publishing or publishing with the biggest publishing houses, it doesn't make that much of a difference anymore. Wow, don't get me wrong. I mean, percentage-wise it does. It costs a lot of money to be bought and there are benefits to it, but it's still hard work. Let's be honest. Writing a book is hard. Like I always say, it takes me four hours to put a shitty blog post together. Writing a book is a monster of a book.

Kirsten: 55:59

It technically is.

Peter: 56:02

Especially if, like yourself, you're writing not just to people that want the science, but you're also not just writing to people that just want some recipes that could have bought, like Jamie Oliver's or Joe Wicks' Lean in 15 sort of it's not that kind of book. You're trying to give more information. That's always a difficult thing to to speak, and I've given loads of information. Uh, I looked at the email. You have a ton, an absolute ton, of workshops coming up.

Kirsten: 56:32

I do, yes. So, um, what have I got? Actually, I've got it here, my net, so a lot them are online. There's one of them that's in Brighton, but most of them are online. So I regularly do things like my menopause nutrition workshop, but that was a couple of weeks ago. I'll probably do one in a few months. My next one is the 27th of April and that's what is an anti-inflammatory diet. I get asked about the anti-inflammatory diet.

Speaker 3: 57:03

All the time, so I focus on that.

Kirsten: 57:07

I've got the 19th of May nutrition for people living with cancer so we've not really touched on that, but that's one of my like my main specialist area that I work with.

Kirsten: 57:16

I don't just work with people with cancer, but I guess maybe half the people I work with do, and I'm really involved with yes to Life and the British Society for Integrative Oncology, which are both organizations that focus on that. Then my next online workshop after that is Thursday, the 9th of June, and that's the secret to healthy snack of june, and that's the secret to healthy snacking. So that's the one that's yeah that's what we've been talking about today.

Peter: 57:48

So if you go to eventbritecouk and tick the little box at the top for online workshops and just put my name in, kirsten chick chick has in the baby bird, they'll all come up whatever I'm doing, I'll obviously link to I've got free here and if you send me the one in june, the snack and I'll link to that one as well, because it'd be a shame to miss that one. Um yeah, the anti-inflammatory diet one. I think that's a no-brainer. That's going to be a sellout, right?

Peter: 58:19

um yeah because that is everybody's into that now, and I'm told we need to do more than just eat a couple of berries.

Kirsten: 58:26

Um yeah, I mean, berries are great they're awesome yeah, but it's the whole thing. It's kind of understanding, learning to understand what is it that kind of irritates your gut as an individual and what is it that helps to seize that, and what strategies can you put in to help calm down that inflammation.

Peter: 58:46

And again, it all links back to stress, doesn't it? And that's the beauty of this whole thing, and I'm thinking because you're talking, obviously you're talking. We spoke about the cancer, the nutrition for people living with cancer element of that. A lot of that is linked to inflammation and all that sort of stuff now as well, isn't it? We kind of have the understanding now, so to speak, that there's a quite a strong link between inflammation and cancer. I'm not saying sugar causes cancer, I'm just saying that there's a link between yeah, there's a lot of people.

Kirsten: 59:20

There's been that buzz kind of phrase, hasn't there sugar?

Kirsten: 59:23

feeds cancer, which isn't technically true. And, like I said, sugar isn't evil. Sugar isn't a bad thing. But if you're eating sugar in a way that it's creating inflammation, then that inflammation is a well-known driver of cancer. There's so much research around it now, so it's kind of it's how we eat it. So if we're just eating lots of refined sugar all of the time, um, and that's pushing us towards insulin resistance, you know that type 2 diabetes, um situation that's going to be creating a lot of inflammation in the body.

Kirsten: 1:00:01

Um, but bits here and there, well supported. If we eat sugar with fiber, then it slows down how it enters the bloodstream. Um, if we eat it with nutrients that help support the insulin pathways, like magnesium again that we talked about before and zinc, and also manganese and chromium, for example, then um, which you know if you're eating, if you eat food in traditional ways, it always contains all of these things. If you can't go back to how our great great grandparents were doing it, you know we spent generations intuitively figuring out ways to eat that maximised our nourishment from food and we've undone so much of that in a couple of generations. But we need to get back to that because the wisdom's all in there.

Peter: 1:00:57

I'm completely with you and again, we can blame the food companies for this stuff. In the 80s I remember, and I remember you might be old enough to remember, I doubt it, but remember when supermarkets, in Holland at least, were never that popular, and when supermarkets I mean the supermarket, the big 24-hour shop mega markets we used to call them at the time. I think the big 24-hour shop mega markets we used to call them at the time. I think In the beginning they put the fruit and veg in the bakery at the very entrance to the shop. At the start that was the first thing you saw, because people we used to go to the market and go to the grocers and they had to be convinced that buying from the supermarket was as healthy and as wholesome of an experience as going to the market was.

Peter: 1:01:42

If I walk into Tesco now it's at the back. I walk past convenience stuff first, where the school kids and all that can buy the Reese's peanut butter cups and Snickers bars and all that sort of stuff. You have convenience at the start now of the supermarket and Snickers bars and all that sort of stuff. You have convenience at the start now of the supermarkets. And it's quite interesting that over the course of a couple of years because this was I'm going to show my age, but this was in the 80s so over the course of 40 years, we've completely changed the way we shop and we've completely changed the way we eat, and it didn't take that long to undo all that, like you say, in centuries of of just stuff that made sense. Yeah, um, it didn't take us that long to undo, and it shouldn't take us that long to go back to somewhat basics. Uh, a little bit, yeah. So, on that happy note, was there anything else you wanted to touch on? Because I think we touched on a lot of stuff there oh gosh, we have haven't.

Kirsten: 1:02:45

We, yeah, we've done pretty well we squeeze a lot of information yeah, um, I guess you know if, if people want to find out more, I've got a lot of um. I've got a fair few blogs and stuff up I'm fairly active on social media, especially instagram, so um, kirstenchickcom is a good hub and it'll take you to my social media as well.

Peter: 1:03:12

And you've got the podcast as well. Right, you've got yeah, the life podcast and north and chick podcast yeah, yeah, so very active, got lots of stuff out there.

Kirsten: 1:03:22

I'm yeah, yeah. So the nutrition books life podcast is really great if either you're you're thinking about buying the book but you're not sure about whether it's for you. So this is like um, the podcast is free, it's 10 minute episodes, so it's bite-sized chunks. Or if you've got the book and you want a companion to the book, or if you're just not great with reading um, so that you know the book's not accessible for you, then hopefully the podcast will be, and it's also on youtube with subtitles, so I'm just trying to make it all as accessible as possible for people it must be nice people listening to this.

Peter: 1:03:58

It must be nice to have someone who's actually active on social media, rather than myself, who's already forgotten two days in a row to put something on oh well, yeah, no, I'm not active every day no, I mean, I'm just terrible for it.

Peter: 1:04:11

It's because I don't care. Yeah, my, my listeners will know I just don't care that much about the Instagram and all that sort of stuff. It causes me nothing but pain. Um, I just clicked't care that much about Instagram and all that sort of stuff. It causes me nothing but pain. I just clicked on the Amazon link £12.99 for the book it's a bargain.

Kirsten: 1:04:26

Wow, it's an absolute steal that's come down.

Peter: 1:04:31

That must be because of the second edition, I think I get a 35. It says here a 35% discount.

Kirsten: 1:04:40

I think the RRP is £20.

Peter: 1:04:41

Yeah, £20id, which is? I mean, that is, that is pennies. So instead of buying, it's a hardback.

Kirsten: 1:04:47

It's beautiful. It's so beautiful. The design of it is stunning, even if you just want a coffee table but it looks.

Peter: 1:04:55

It looks because I'm clicking on some pictures. It genuinely looks the pie and, like I said before we started, if you firmly Whittingstall is on board, then I'm on board. It's that simple Because at the end of the day, he is a national treasure of that map.

Kirsten: 1:05:09

Oh he's lovely. Yeah, it's really good of him to say nice things.

Peter: 1:05:15

Cool. So on that happy note, I think we can always end with a compliment for you, Fernley Whittingston.

Peter: 1:05:24

I can press stop record here, and indeed I press stop record Right. Thanks very much to Kirsten for giving up an hour and a bit of her time. It is so, so much appreciated when you have this level of expert gets on. I mean, I love talking to people that really, really, really know their stuff. So the book is called nutrition brought to life. I'll link to it in the podcast description. You can obviously find it on amazon. You've also find it. If you hate bezos, it's almost as much as I do you can go to waterstones as well. I've sent. I've put the link to the Waterstones website in there as well, where you can buy the book, the Nutrition Brought to Life podcast. I've linked to that. Of course, kirsten is on Instagram and YouTube with a wonderful channel on YouTube, and she's on Facebook and she hears Kitty gnawing on stuff in the background.

Peter: 1:06:16

Because you know that is my life these days. It's just carnage. I don't mind telling you it is absolute carnage in the hp and b headquarters. Uh, I have the dogs running around like maniacs. My boiler broke down. I have not had any hot water. I can't get a plumber out to fix the thing because I'm on lG and I'm not on the main network for gas. So I need a special guy to come out and he can't come out until tomorrow and so this pre-record is already two days late and it's driving me up the wall. You know what? I need A little bit of that stress management. So I'm going to go back and I'm going to listen to Kirsten share her knowledge again and I'm going to I'll put the recipe. There's not enough room in the podcast description. By the way, that recipe that she mentioned, I will put that up on the Instagram when the podcast comes out. Instagram, when the podcast comes out, I will have a separate little title with the Instagram with the little recipe and all that sort of thing.

Peter: 1:07:28

Anyways, give us a like and a subscribe. If you don't like too much. It would be much, much, much, much, much appreciated. Give us a little review. I think we're up to like ratings-wise. We're up to like 170, something like that, which is so insanely cool Up to 170 people that have given us a little five-star, four-star little thing on Apple. It's much appreciated, as always. Right, peter, at healthy postnatal bodycom. If you want to be a guest, uh, if you have any questions that you'd like answered, I've got a really cool interview with uh, dr David uh Prologo. I hear a complicated surname, dr David Prologo, which I just recorded the other day. I'm talking about the myth of many diets and all that sort of stuff and weight loss and all that sort of thing, what he calls the changing point is and all that sort of thing that will come out next week, more guests coming up after that. It's going to be amazing.

Peter: 1:08:47

What are we doing for in the news this week? Let me have a quick look right, because in the news it's always nice having in the news right. So here we go. So in the news this week I have a very, really really interesting bit that was emailed to me. Interesting bit of news was a study that was done, admittedly sponsored, by a company called Green Force, who are one of those vegan food, fake meat kind of companies, and therefore it could well be slightly biased, or at least that's what it originally looked like, but I looked into it a little bit. That said, basically, eating a plant-based meal twice a week is the equivalent to planting 14 billion trees is the headline. Now the headline is, of course, the little bit of attention-grabbing sort of journalism. Right, this is from the Beat, by the way, it's also on plant-based news and all that sort of stuff.

Peter: 1:09:48

So I thought 14 billion, that's an awful lot. And you read the thing it says going meat-free two days a week is the equivalent of planting 14 billion. And then someone in there says there's this vegan powerlifter, this German bloke I think he is. You might recognize him from that Game Changers documentary on Netflix where you know that really shitty documentary that really shot you up. As he said, it's about two meals a day. So there's a bit of a dispute.

Peter: 1:10:23

So I looked into this a little bit because 14 billion sounds a lot. But then again, what do I know? Right, I'm just a little PT who knows how to do math and I have an interest in environmental stuff. But when it comes to food, I mainly look at the nutritional elements and the health aspects of it and of course, as I've said many times before, plant-based, predominantly plant-based meals. So 85 of your plate being uh, being vegetables or something like that is significantly healthier for you than having 85 meat on your plate, and that is just the way it is. That is what the science says.

Peter: 1:11:03

But anyways, I took out my trusty calculator. Like I said, 14 billion trees, that sounds like a lot, that sounds like an awful lot. So I looked into it and I had a look at this. Like I said, this was every adult in the UK or every person in the UK. I just went with person Every person in the UK. So 62 million people going meat-free for two meals per week, and the effect is not hard. And now you know we'll go by beef, for instance, and apparently a kilo of beef to produce that is 70 kilos. So one kilo of beef takes 70 kilos of carbon, produces 70 kilos of carbon emissions, which is you know, quite a lot.

Peter: 1:11:53

I didn't know. There's lots of this news to me. So then I looked up carbon offset per tree and all that sort of stuff, and apparently a typical tree can absorb around 21 kilos of carbon dioxide per year. Um, so one tree, you know, does about 300 grams of beef, which is about a meal, but that's per year, right? So so that is, that is quite something.

Peter: 1:12:23

Now how do we get to that 14 billion? Well, first of all, we have to divide the 14 billion. In my opinion, this is how I did it 14 billion. You have to divide it by 62 million, which is about 225. Don't worry, I've done the math for you. So that's 225. 14 billion divided by 62 million, that's 225, and that's per year. Now, that doesn't sound that much, 225 trees per year, but yeah. So all of a sudden, that 14 billion sounds a lot more realistic. And we know it takes three trees per year for a kilo of beef. Three trees per year for a kilo of beef. So all of a sudden that sounds reasonable, that sounds as in, it sounds genuinely achievable.

Peter: 1:13:09

That 14 billion is all of a sudden not out of, not a crazy number, right? So, assuming I have I don't always have beef and all that sort of stuff, but you know, assume I have a 200, don't always have beef and all that sort of stuff, but you know, assume I have a 200 gram piece of beef. Actually, 150 gram piece of beef right per meal. So small, a very small steak. That's about three quarters yeah, it's about three quarters of a normal size steak. Normal size steak is 227 grams in the UK. So 150 grams of beef twice a week that I no longer eat. So that's 300 grams of beef and I do that for 365 days. So we know one tree having 300 grams of beef, so not significantly more than the 225. So, if anything and this is the mind boggling thing for me, if anything, that 14 billion is an underestimation of the actual number. Now, of course I use beef, but chicken has a lower carbon footprint and so does pork. But I used a very low quantity, that 150 gram figure. I used a very low number of beef and that's astonishing. So it turns out that this is true, this stupid headline, this stupid headline which you know it, and that is even what that strongman, the ambassador, for for this thing. Better give him some credit here.

Peter: 1:14:52

Patrick Baboumian what he was saying two meals per day, so you don't even need to go vegan for two days, just two dinners. That, where you currently eat meat, that you're not going to have meat anymore, saves 14, is equivalent of planting 14 billion fully grown trees per year. It's astonishing. I mean, that is huge to me, a game changer, if you will, to refer to that stupid thing. I'm not saying go vegan because I won't, or go vegetarian. I'm just saying that the people that are saying it's all or nothing are clearly wrong.

Peter: 1:15:42

Small decisions when it comes to this stuff. Go and meet for one day a week. If everybody did that, that's 7 billion trees a year, or probably 10, what my calculations are saying. That is a huge, huge difference. It doesn't sound like a lot, but you try finding a space to plant 7 billion trees in the UK. It's astonishing. I was genuinely surprised because I thought when I was running the calculations, when I had a look at the numbers, I thought, nah, this sounds like, this sounds too much, it sounds wrong. And I did the Santa trick I checked my list, I checked it twice, checked my numbers twice and turned out, if anything, they underestimated it. So there you go, turns out all these crusty people. You know they're all right.

Peter: 1:16:34

Anyways, that's it for the podcast. We're running 118, 120 minutes bit of music, so before you know it, you spent an hour and a half listening to this thing. Anyways, you have a tremendous week. I'm back next week with that interview with Dr David Prologo, which is a fascinating chat as well. You have a great week and, as always, peter at healthypostnatalbodycom, if you have anything or you come across any interesting information that you want to send my way, it's always much appreciated. I love getting this sort of news. All right, thank you very much for listening. Have a great week. Bye now.

Speaker 3: 1:17:27

You've got nothing left to do but face what's in front of you. Face what's in front of you, loud as thunder, clear as water. Look at what's in front of you, temperature rising, no more disguises, and it feels like it is the first time I've been inside your chest and to see. Life is just a man and I am just a breath, just a breath, just a breath. Shapes and colors formed inside Out from what was black and white, not hard to see For you and me. Everything has fallen bright and it feels like it is the first time being inside your chest and I see life is just a man, I am just a minute. Write the pages, turn the course around, I'll, I'll Find the phrases come up from the ground and it feels like it is the first time I've been inside your chest and I see life is just a man and I am just a minute, just a minute. You.