Welcome to Healthy Ish. Dear listeners, thanks for joining us today on this daily podcast from Body and Soul. I am Felicity Harley, malecular nutritionist. Doctor Emma Beckett has five academic degrees relevant to nutrition, food science, and human health, and she has a new book out. It is called You Are More Than What You Eat. She popped into the studio to discuss the prevalence of nutritional disinformation. Oh yeah, it is everywhere people. How to spot the red flags
next time you're scrolling social media. Plus, she shares her number one tip for eating healthy full. Now, make sure you're listening to our other sister podcast, Extra Healthy Ish, where she unpacks how diret culture gas lights us. You can search for Extra Healthy Ish wherever you get your podcasts. Emma, nice to have you in the studio.
Excited to be here. Thank you so nice.
Last time, listeners, we did do it via our online studio, but it's so much better when it's in the flesh.
Technology is great, but three D is better.
I like that.
I'm into that. And congratulations on your new book.
Thank you so much.
I'm really excited. How does it feel?
It feels really empowering to have it out there in the world. I think while you're writing, you don't realize how many thoughts and ideas that you have, and then seeing them all together, I feel really proud of the information and the perspectives that I've managed to put out there.
There's some different perspectives. Let's talk about one of those, which some people might disagree with, but I like it. Keeping it simple is stupid. It's actually one of the titles of the chapters in your book. You want to bring complexity back into the nutritional conversation.
Explain to us what this means.
Yeah, so this sounds scary, I know. And often what we do in communications and nutrition particularly is we try and keep things simple, and sometimes that's for marketing, and sometimes that's for motivation purposes, because no one's going to do what you say if you go listen. This is
really hard. But complexity isn't the same as difficulty, and complexity is about the fact that we can't simply predict what's going to happen in complex systems, and so it means that some of the things we think we're doing for a lot of benefit are actually a waste of our time and money, and some of the things that we're really stressed about because we're not doing it's actually kind of okay because your body is taking care of that. So leaning into complexity isn't about going this is hard,
let's not bother. Leaning into complexity is about going, Okay, I don't need to follow rules, I can apply tools, and I can stress a little bit less about all of this healthy eating stuff.
Actually, one point you do make in your book is that you know trusting your body. Our bodies are designed for us to survive, aren't they, And often we don't. We just think I must follow this rule or this person's telling me this, do that, but often we don't actually listen to what our body's trying to tell us.
Yeah, and because biology is complicated, our bodies are capable of so much more than we think they are. They're very robust, but knowing that they're robust doesn't mean that we should torture them. So it's about being in balance and flux with your body and your situation, rather than trying to stick to rigid rules of correctness or rigid ideas of perfection.
How does this oversimplification end up in manifesting diet trends Because and diet culture. I think that's another big message of your book, is how we all just get sucked into diet culture thinking we are being healthy.
Yep.
So the oversimplification is how the diet cycle happens, and we keep jumping from one just to the next, just to the next simple to the next easy, and inevitably each one of those things fails because of course we can't do one thing or just quit one thing, or just add one thing, just do this, just do this.
I mean you talk about the word just, don't you. Yeah, And of.
Course it doesn't work, but we keep on that cycle of just trying the next thing and just trying the next thing, and then each time it fails, we don't blame the diet. We blame ourselves and we go, Okay, well I wasn't good enough at that one. I'll try the next one. And so just keeps popping up, and the simplification keeps popping up to keep us on the cycle.
But it's keeping us distracted. So it's pulling you towards problems that don't need solving, like our body shapes, and pulling us away from problems that we would really love if we could solve, like keeping bodies nourished and healthy.
Let's talk about a bit about nutrition information on social media, because there is a hell of a lot of it and it's often so hard to know what's I mean.
You've got five academic degrees, What's I mean? You can find.
Science and a study for anything you want to preach on social media.
Can't you?
So how can we get better at sorting the bs from the legit?
Yeah?
So the number one thing is stop taking advice from people based on their appearance, because their appearance is not necessarily connected to what it is that they're doing, and it doesn't mean you're going to look like that if you follow what they're doing, that is then further connected to the bigger picture of check your biases. So we talk a lot about critical thinking, but people think they're being critical in nutrition a lot. And what we really need to do is unpack why do I believe this?
And why do I want to believe it? Do I want to believe it because you know that would make my life a lot easier if it was true. Do I want to feel better about myself?
Like?
Really, unpacking you know, why we want to believe these things is a really big picture thing. It's a lot of work. It doesn't happen overnight, but it's really used.
To a little point actually, because I haven't heard anyone say that before. Anyway, carry on, But.
In terms of like things you can do now, it's looking out for the red flags. It's going. Is someone saying this is all I need to do? Are they saying easy or simple or just? Or are they selling you a diet that has a name? Does it sound too good to be true? Well, then it probably is. Are there strict rules? Is it exclusionary? Does it look
down on other people who don't eat that way? So if it feels like it's a bit of a diet faction, if it feels like it's too good to be true, probably is, And probably you don't need to be that strict to get the results that you want. But take the bits from different people's advice and apply the bits that work in your life rather than trying to emulate these specific named diets sold by these very specific looking kinds of people.
How do you approach social meniuactive on socials? How do you as an academic and expert? What sort of advice do you take from other people?
So I think it's about taking information and filtering that through your context. So I always say on social media, this is not advice. This is information, and you choose what to do with it. And I think a lot of people want to sell the entire story and bring people along with them, and whether that's because they're doing it to make money or whether they're doing that because they truly believe in what it is they're sharing with people. But there is no one single way of doing this.
So big red flag is if anyone tell you there's only one way to do it, that person is either lying, misinformed, or.
Trying to sell something very lazy.
Yeah, I like that idea of information actually because it's you know, so often we sold advice, but sharing it as information is I'm not telling you to do something. You take on what I'm saying and if it works for you, great, If it doesn't, it doesn't because every single body, as I say that in air quotes, is different.
Every body is different, and every life is different, so the context is different. And I don't think we talk enough about context because I think people think that science is about having the right or the wrong answer and telling people they should or need to do. But science is much more complex than that, and it's about applying knowledge and solutions in an appropriate way to the situation.
And that is going to look different for everyone. And sometimes people don't like hearing that as an answer because they just want to be doesn't.
Give me a solution, does it?
But it gives you lots of solutions. So instead of looking for the one solution, having options means you can flex through those options as your context changes through your day, your week, your month, your year.
Now with all your academic degrees relevant to nutrition, food science, and human health, and as I read in your book, we make around three hundred decisions about food every day. What's your number one message when it comes to an ex meal?
Healthy eating? I mean, what do you call it now?
I'm like questioning, I'm like picking up what is it healthy eating? Or how do you frame it?
I think healthy eating is a good way to say it. You know, there's a lot of judgment that comes with the term we use around healthy eating. You know, eating well, for example, puts that kind of good bad judgment on it, so we try to avoid that. But healthy is something we can strive for. Acknowledging that health will look different to each person in their context. But my number one thing with healthy eating is stop trying to be perfect, because we keep looking at perfect and going how will
I get there? And you know, we model perfect, and we look at a perfect plate of steamed vegetables or raw vegetables, and if you can't access those, if they don't taste good, if you don't know how to cook them, if you don't want to eat them, then that's not perfect anymore. So just be perfectly imperfect, and you know, eat the vegetables in the way that works for you.
And enjoy your next meal.
Because if it's not enjoyable, then that's going to be a very difficult road to healthy eating. And being stressed and being unhappy that's not healthy either.
Yeah, amen, Emma, thank you for coming on healthy, thank you for having me. Well there you have it.
Some red flags you need to look out for next time you ask social media and see that well easy or effortless tag that hack on TikTok perhaps may not be what it's all sold as. I hope you enjoyed this chat with Emma. Grab a new book. It is called You Are More Than What You Eat.
It is out now.
And also I will leave a link to Emma's last chat on healthy Ish where we discussed ozenpic. If you did enjoy this one, though, tell us rate and review this episode, or you can subscribe to our other sister podcast, Extra healthy Ish Anything Else. Head to body and soold dot com dot you follow us on socials grob Our print edition which is out in your local Sunday paper, and until tomorrow, it's still healthy Ish