If you're not putting yourself in the position where you're a beginner and you feel that challenge and the butterflies, then you're limiting your growth. But actually, what I love is being a life learner and realizing how much more I have to learn and also just how amazing we all are. We can all learn so much more than we think.
Welcome to the Sees the Yay Podcast. Busy and happy are not the same thing. We too rarely question what makes the heart seeing. We work, then we rest, but rarely we play and often don't realize there's more than one way. So this is a platform to hear and explore the stories of those who found lives They adore the good, bad and ugly. The best and worst day
will bear all the facets of seizing your ya. I'm Sarah Davidson or a spoonful of Sarah, a lawyer turned fu entrepreneur whos walped the suits and heels to co found matcha Maiden and Matcham Milk Bark CZA is a series of conversations on finding a life you love and exploring the self out challenge, joy and fulfillment along the way. Lovely Neighborhood, I hope you all had a wonderful double long weekend and getting back into the swing of things. It does take the brain a little while to kick
back into gear. I had some very much needed downtime in the countryside over easter with lots of wholesome analog playta We did crosswords and puzzles and read books, and my goodness, it does wonders for the soul. So often you don't realize how fast you've been going, or how hard you've been pushing yourself until you stop, and then
it all catches up on you. And I talk about the relentlessness of our modern pace of life so much on this show, and yet even with all that knowledge in my brain, I still constantly fall victim to it myself. It's just crazy how we can get stuck in these cycles. So I am very grateful not only for our guest today, but for the timing of his appearance, as he just happens to be a world renowned expert in optimizing our health, our wellbeing, and our longevity and is exactly the person
whose brains that I needed to pick this week. Nick and I are lucky to have been friends with Simon Hill for many years now connecting through multiple shared chapters in the wellness industry, including launching product businesses. This was back in the Matchmaden days for us opening our plant based restaurants at similar times and sharing in that experience, writing books, hanging with the hemswords, and then of course
entering the wild world of podcasting. One of us has a number one best selling book and a podcast with forty million downloads and counting. And I'll let you, guys guess which one of us that is. You may already know Simon as the brain's behind the multi platform plant Proof, recently rebranded to The Proof, exploring the health and longevity benefits that come with mastering physical exercise, nutrition, mindfulness, recovery, sleep,
and alignment. Simon is a physiotherapist and nutrition scientist with such a unique ability to distill and translate often bluted, nuanced scientific information into snippets that are digestible pun intended by everyday audiences, so that we are equipped to block out the noise and misinformation of the social media age and better our lives. I mean, who doesn't want to live longer and better and be given tips on how to do that in a digestible, easy to access way.
You can see why Simon's is a brain that I'm thrilled to have picked this week and why millions tune into his content. This one is full of zingers, and I hope you guys enjoy as much as I did. Simon Hill, Welcome to Ceza Sarah.
Great to be here with you. Thank you for having me.
Oh my gosh, we were just discussing before we started recording that it's been many, many years, like maybe even almost a decade since I saw you in the flesh, back in the homeland of Australia, which is not where you are currently. But it's lovely to see you, my course.
I think the big problem with having guests that you've followed for a really long time and sort of lived parallel lives that have intersected at very points is wanting to distill that entire person and all their knowledge into a single episode to just showcase everything that's incredible about you.
But with like three hundred and sixty episodes of your own podcast, a book endless knowledge in so many areas, multiple businesses, I've actually struggled a lot to decide where to start with this one, because there's so many places we could, but in most episodes I like to start back at childhood because I think that as we get further and further into our lives, we get clouded by success and the rat races we're just talking about, and sort of taking it back to the very beginning who
you are, when you're a blank slate, and then chasing through all the chapters that formed you into who you are. It always is a nice place to begin someone's journey. So take us back to young Simon and Melbourne boy, what were your first part time jobs? What did you think you'd be?
My first part time job was actually selling footy records at the MCG no.
Record, get your record?
I probably bought enough for you, how I con.
It you might have? Yeah, Yeah, I was really big into skateboarding actually when I was a teenager. So I worked out that I could work at the football self footy records, make some money, and then I could go to the swyards. I'm not sure if you remember the there was a skate park that it's gone now, used to be in the middle of Melbourne and it's right
near Melbourne Central. So I would get off the train with my friends at Melbourne Central and we'd head over to the sour yards and spend all the money that we'd made, like buying new skateboards.
Or new wheels and buy food, and we thought it was so cool.
It's a simple time.
So it was such a simple time.
But I have so many fond memories, like with the friends that I was working with and being able to sneak into the games and sneak into the Grand Final because I had a footy record uniform and I felt so cool at the time. But that's where I kind of cut my teeth with my first job and started to understand money and the importance of money and the fact that you could you could trade your time and labor and in return get some money and then go
out into the world and spend it. But as a kid, yeah, and that's different to getting money from your parents and spending their money. So he gave me a taste for what was to come as an adult. But as a kid,
I was a pretty curious kid. I was like the kid that would always want to know how things worked, and probably annoyingly so, so I would ask my dad and my cousins and my uncle, you know, everything and anything if there was you know, some new piece of technology in front of us, or a car or a bike. I wanted to dismantle it. I wanted to understand how it worked. And my dad was really encouraging. He kind
of really helped encourage that curiosity. He's a scientist himself, a professor now and now has been a professor for forty years of physiology, and so I think I got that from him. You know, he's obviously very cure, wries about how the body works and biology and physiology, and so kind of followed him down that path.
Yeah, and I think he was very closely linked into another sort of big pivotal moment in your younger years that kind of shaped you on the pathway that you're on now. I just listened to your episode of The Imperfect that just came out two days ago, so I'd been sort of doing my research and then was like,
oh wow, this is so handy for me. I get like a refresher of Simon Hill and you talk about your I think you called it your on ramp to wellness, and there's sort of been several in your life and that aligns really closely with what I love in this part of each episode, which is tracing through people's earlier years to sort of look at all the dots that connect and how we think there's this linear pathway to get to where we are, but really it's this mish
mash of events and slide indoors moments, and you know, most people don't figure it out going forwards. It only makes sense kind of looking backwards. But can you maybe take us to that event at fifteen where this passion for wellness kind of really was sparked.
Yeah, So I think up until the age of fifteen, I sort of just thought health was a given. I hadn't been around anyone. My grandparents were still alive, and I hadn't had a family member or pass away or
had any real serious health issue. And when I was fifteen, on this particular day, we were living in Melbourne or outside of Melbourne, and on the weekends, my dad and myself and my brother would often go out to the Yarra Valley, a wine region, and on this Sunday it was just my dad and I and we were having a great day driving around in his MGB, which is this convertible British sports car, and visiting wineries and being curious. I remember we used to ask the wine makers so
many questions. I really got to appreciate how wine was made. And it was also not the first time. But memories of the wine makers and this I digress here, but wine makers like their face lighting up when people were really inquiring about what it is they do.
So I think back.
About that now and I'm like, yeah, gosh, you know, those people probably felt really seen because we would often go to these little tiny wineries, not the bee ones, and spend like my dad would just we'd sit there for like hours. And on this day, we were driving back home to Kinglake where my dad lived, and he started to get some chest pain and I could tell
that he was uncomfortable. Asked him if he was okay, and he said that he has chest pain, but he kind of played it down, and we proceeded to go home and cooked dinner.
He seemed fine. I went to.
Bed, and in the early hours of the following morning, I woke up to noise in the kitchen and thought I'd better go out and see what was happening. And by the time I got out to the kitchen, my dad was there with the phone. He was on his knees, he was out of breath. I can remember this vividly, and he had called triple zero, and by that time he could no longer deny what was happening. He was having a heart attack. My dad studies cardiovascular risk factors. They knew exactly what was happening.
The strength of denial.
I think it's pretty common among men to kind of wait until the last minute to go and see a doctor, and this was like really waiting until the last minute.
And so he pushed it to write to the limits.
And I ended up speaking with the paramedic and just explaining like what his state was. And we were in King Lake, and this was a while back. So now I imagine it's quite developed out between Bundur and King Lake, but there wasn't actually much back then. It was a lot of paddocks and country farms, and the nearest hospital was a little while away. So they said, we're going to send a helicopter, and before I knew it, there
was a helicopter. There was paramedics inside the house, putting him up on the stretcher and attaching all sorts of different cords and cables and measuring vitals and all these sorts of things, and then they whisked him away and took him in the helicopter. That wasn't room for me, so I trailed in the ambulance by car, and my mom and my brother.
They were in Alpham.
Because my parents were divorced, so I called them and explained what was happening, and so they then met started driving and met me at the hospital.
Oh my gosh, you were fifteen by yourself.
Yeah, So it was just that was just me kind of dealing with all of that, and I don't think I really realized until like maybe fifteen years down the track that that was like quite a traumatic experience to sort of see a loved one, you know, my dad, my hero, who all of a sudden his health is crumbling and you don't know if he's going to live. And we waited at the hospital and the doctor came out and let us know that my dad had had
a very severe heart attack. He was forty one, and he wasn't on any prescription medications and had no diagnosed conditions, so it was kind of out of the blue, very unexpected, and they had managed to save his life, which was like obviously the most important thing that we cared about
at that point. In time, and then he walked us through my dad's prognosis and said that he would likely be on certain medications for the rest of his life, and that my brother and I, being young men essentially I was fifteen, my brother about eighteen, would really need to keep you an eye on this because cardiovascular disease runs in families, and that we kind of walked away from that event for many, many years, sort of holding this limiting belief that we'd been dealt this dodgy card
essentially your cards, and so we had these genes that you know, led to our father who seemed healthy. He wasn't from the outside. He wasn't someone that was going and eating McDonald's and hungry Jackson. He wasn't OBEs. My dad was representative of a typical Australian father. He was someone who was probably a little stressed from work and trying to earn enough money. But he exercised, you know, three or four days a week. He tried to eat whole foods. He wasn't eating a whole lot of junk food.
And he didn't smoke, and he drank you know, I guess I'd say like the average amount of alcohol for an Australian, which is probably too much.
I was going to say relative globally, probably a little bit side the average.
Yeah, let's just say it's a little high, but still unexpected at forty one. Right at forty one, you are still very much, you know, middle aged young. You're not expecting to have a heart attack or a stroke or any type of significant cardiac event.
And it wasn't until many, many years later.
When I had gone to university and started understanding science, that I was able to better understand the role of genetics and lifestyle our environment. And so while I probably do have some genes that are kind of stacking the deck against me from a cardiovascular disease point of view, the main reason that cardiovascid disease actually runs in families is not genetic. It's that families typically adopt the same lifestyles.
When you double click and deal a little deeper into the research, sure, genes probably count for about twenty percent of your health fate and risk of chronic disease, but the other eighty percent is influenced by the choices that you do or don't make. And discovering that kind of flipped the I guess the narrative. And I haven't really ever thought about this, but I probably had a bit
of a victim narrative. You know, I was probably not in a very empowered position, and then when I had that information, it changed to me saying, Okay, I have these genes, but I kind of can accept a lot of responsibility here and understand that I have a lot
of power. And that was, you know, a very empowering moment for me, and it led to everything I'm pursuing now and kind of provides a purpose for why I have the conversations I have, so that the everyday person out there can also feel that empowerment and understand that they you know, they may have genes that are predisposing them to breast cancer or to prostate cancer or if you're like me, having a heart attack, but there's there's a lot you can do to stop those genes being
expressed and really reduce your risk of having those diseases affect your life.
I loved that. I mean, I've heard you sort of speak to that statistic quite a lot, that eighty twenty split, and it fascinates me in quite a unique way because I think you probably already know that I'm adopted, and so I've never had the full picture of our genetics. Nick's mother is also adopted, so we both have like a bit of a mystery in our genetic makeup. And often when I'm asked, have you ever gone to find your birth parents and medical history? You know, have you
wanted that picture? I've actually often. I mean there's lots of sort of social and emotional parts of that conversation, but in the health area alone, when I did twenty three in me the DNA testing, I wanted to know my ethnic makeup, but I didn't want to know if I had a predisposition to anything because of that exact reason.
I thought, if it's bad, it's not guaranteed, but it's going to make me think I've been dealt these cards, and I'll focus on it rather than knowing that that eighty percent I'm empowered to change within that sphere of influence, it's massive, and I didn't want to know that, you know, have this like, yeah, this opportunity to become a VG them to the cards I've dealt. And I think that the message that you have in health is also really
well extrapolated to life, is it? Sometimes you think you've had this bad luck because of your circumstances, but you can change so much more of it than you think. You think. I'm shy, I can't public speak, I'm short, I can't be a model. You know, there's all these things that we think silo our choices in life. But maybe that's twenty percent of the picture. But that eighty percent you can work with with your lifestyle, with your choices,
with the mindset that you take. And when you said that in the Imperfect episode, I just was like writing down furiously. I'm like, oh my god, eighty twenty people need to know this.
I agree with you. We can really limit ourselves and put ourselves in a box. We can become defined by something like those things that you just mentioned there. I will say, in speaking to many people about this idea of doing genetic testing, it's funny because I think personality I play a role.
You know.
There are some people who at least the feedback that they've given me is that going out and doing a genetic test and they found out they had like two copies of APO E four, which it means that you have significantly higher risk of dementia.
And I'm not.
Sure if you watched Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, but that was one of the key for like a focal point of that that documentary was his work with doctor Peter Attia. They did genetic testing discovered he had two of those copies, And I think it can go both ways. So I agree with that. I think there's certain people that do not do well with that information, and so you have
to know yourself. And if you think that that is going to limit you and perhaps lead to a kind of more of a victim mindset than genetic testing, is probably not for you. But then there is the person out there who just wants to know all of the information and he wants to prove people wrong, and so finding out they have two copies of Apoe four provides all the motivation they need. And that type of person
is also the type of person you know. It's very hard to get people to adopt a healthy lifestyle.
But one of the.
Ways that I've at least seen that helps people is either they go through a very serious have a very serious event themselves, or they see someone directly like I did.
And if you don't, then your why may.
Not be strong enough for you to sustain the changes that you make. So for someone who hasn't had a severe health event themselves or hasn't seen a close to a loved one, it might be the generating testing that does provide the motivating piece for them. But I totally agree with you that you know, I know people in my life that it would just be too much information for some people.
So funny that you said that, And my reason for my reaction just then was because I had scrapped whatever my next question was and typed just as we're writing before that idea of I think you and I have been in the wellness industry for it, and had our podcast for a similar amount of time. We've kind of navigated through the big changes that have happened in the space, and one of the things I've often found that we all share in common is some big pivotal event, which
is often a crisis. It's very rarely a big positive event. It's always some kind of physical breakdown of ourselves or someone else, and then a passion to share enough information with others so they don't need that kind of crisis to make a change that they can preempt it and learn by not by doing, but by seeing, so that they don't have to have a breakdown like all of us.
I think there was a stage in the wellness industry where every single person's book was like such a similar format because we all were speaking to this I had this aha moment, and I hope that you know, we don't all need to have that to sort of but I do take your point that for some people you don't take it seriously until you know you're at risk,
and so that information can be really empowering. So I absolutely, in no way, anyone listening I'm encouraging you not to get a DNA test to get more information if that is the path it's all about. And the same with anything in life. It's all about knowing your own incentivization and motivations and hacking the way you do your life around yourself, not around other people's, which is I've always found really fascinating.
I often think back to, like if my dad hadn't have had that experience, Let's say I was twenty five and someone sat me down and said, these are all of the principles of a healthy lifestyle and ways that you can reduce your risk of chronic disease A, because I wouldn't have gone through that first hand experience with my dad. I'm not sure how engaged I would have been in that conversation and then be how much discipline and motivation or intention would I actually have to go
away and make those changes and see them through. And I say intention because it requires intention. We live in an environment that makes it very easy to be unhealthy, and you know, versus some of the longest living populations in the world, it's not that these people just have, you know, magically more willpower. They just live in an environment where the healthy decision is usually the affordable and
also the easy decision. But we live in like a maze, and so like there's all of these indulgent things trying to pull us off track away from.
Health, all the shiny things, right, all.
The shiny objects, and all this temptation. And so you need to have some intention. And when there is a strong why underneath that intention, because you've had this health experience yourself or a family member has, then I think you're more likely to kind of have that intention sort of front of mind as you're navigating your way through the world.
And one thing I think you said in the Imperfect podcast is that you know when you are twenty five and you hear that someone had a heart attack at forty one, You're like, well, forty one's ancient, And now we're all closer to forty one than we are to five, And suddenly it's all like Jesus, when did we get here? But you know, one thing that I think is so powerful about you is the way that you deliver scientific
information that is incredibly powerful. It is sometimes delivered in a way that removes so much of the power of it in its message because it's there's so much noise, it's all conflicting, there's no context, it's not distilled, and it's also not reframed to suit the short attention span of the generation it's meant to target. Whereas you have cut through and been able to like one of your last episode, the one of the last episodes, the title is this food swap could cut your risk of early
death by seventeen percent. Who is not going to click on that. You don't have to be forty one to think, Jeesus, I could be doing something that risks an early death and I could reduce that, Like your your capacity for deliveries is so incredible. But before we get to that, and some of the messages that I'd love our listeners
to walk away with some kind of spark. What I think is even more interesting about what you said about twenty five is that it wasn't until twenty five, twenty six to twenty seven for you that I mean, you'd been a physiotherapist. You hadn't actually done your nutrition studies until your twenties, and at the time that probably felt late. That probably felt like you were behind. You know, you'd not been in this industry when other people had started
their first degree in nutrition. What was it like to start again? You know, we have this fear of going backwards and self doubt to be a beginner, and I think people don't think they can begin something like later. You know, if you didn't do it is your first degree, it's like, well, I'm too late. I don't think it's ever too late. But what went through your head when you did go back to the beginning and start as a sort of newbie because your wellness had been more biomechanical until then.
You're too old, it's too late, being silly. The critic was pretty loud.
And then I had the same voice again when I started the podcast and I said, you know, earlier we were talking offair, like we started in twenty eighteen, and at the time I was I thought it's too late. And in the last year I've picked the guitar back up and I want to start singing as well with that and so same voice again, way too old.
You're nearly forty, Like, what are you doing kind of.
Thing over the heill mate over the hill.
If you're not putting yourself in the position where you're a beginner and you feel that challenge and the butterflies, then you're limiting your growth. And I've certainly had periods in my life where I'm uber comfortable, you know, and everything just feels super comfy and good, and that's okay. But I think every now and then you need to do a bit of an audit, and you know, where are you holding back? And I knew I wanted to
better understand nutrition. I knew that it was a gap in my knowledge of understanding the human body, and it just required me to get over those nerves, to get over the fact that I was going to be a little older going back to university, and to kind of swallow my price, so to speak, and throw myself back into it, and to be honest, looking back now, it's like what I went and did a master's in nutrition science, and I was in my mid to late twenties.
It's not that old.
Oh it's so young.
I've even considered maybe going back and doing a PhD. So I think certainly have had the inn a critic to answer your question, and a lot of doubt and whether it was a good idea or not.
But the more.
I've thrown myself back into these positions where I'm learning something from scratch and I'm a beginner, I realized that it's what actually what I love is being a life learner and realizing how much more I have to learn, and also just how amazing we all are. We can all learn so much more than we think, and I think that's really really cool. You know, twelve months ago, I couldn't play the guitar at all. Now I can play and it's pretty crappy.
But in a year you'll be headlining Coachella.
Maybe it's semi decent and I could be at Coachella. I joke around my friend, you could sell out Madison Square.
Got it a hundred percent, one hundred percent, so you could maybe be the intersection of like music and stats about health, Like maybe there could be some kind of like I talk about effiicient delivery. Maybe it's through music, like who even knows?
Could be Yeah, yeah, whatever gets people listening it. I'm gay.
So I mean, I went back to our dms before we started recording, and I think the first one was like maybe back in twenty eighteen when we did first start our podcast. Maybe a little bit before that, but I think through my husband Nick, I think you'd known him for quite a while before that as well. So we've kind of crossed paths many many times. And one of our biggest chapters in parallel was having plant based venues in a landscape where that wasn't really a thing.
I think we've actually been, you know, thinking about you thought you started late in twenty eighteen. It was so early that compared to now, that was so early in the health and wellness industry. It was such a time. Looking back, we had Matromaiden and Matrimilk Bar and you had Eden, and I just looking back at that time and how far we've come, and I have so many
questions for you. But first I want to go back to the fact that we both really focused our plant based messaging, as you mentioned before, about these ancient civilizations around the blue zones and longevity, and took the animal rights ethics based the heat of those arguments away to kind of hitch to people who weren't eating plants, because it creates more change to serve a plant based meal to a non vegan than it does to a vegan. And I loved that we were doing that in parallel
with each other. When you did first sort of start eating more plants, you were a very heavy meat eater who had been in a very sporty, protein heavy lifestyle beforehand. Can you talk to us about some of the heaviest eye opening statistics or facts that you learned that spark that change for you, and that now you wish you
know more people knew, because I still think people. I can't believe how many customers would come in and just have no idea why they needed to be They just didn't understand why we needed to be eating more plants. They did it because we had a cool looking latte. But like that behavior change, what changed it for you?
I think when you look at the totality of evidence, and when I say totality of evidence, I mean essentially bench top science, so being at the sort of bottom of the evidence hierarchy, which is scientists working with peagery dishes and sort of sell cultures, and then animal studies, and then you go up or wrong and you're with
large scale human observational studies. So it could be populations in America or in Japan or in parts of Europe where there's one hundred thousands of people followed over decades. And then above that you go to randomized controlled trials where they're often conducted you know, over weeks to months. It's a bit expensive to conduct them for longer than that.
When you look at all of that evidence related to nutrition, while there's not one absolute diet that's clearly the best for everyone, there is a very clear theme or sort of big over overview picture of what a healthy dietary pattern looks like. And it's a diet that is low and saturated fat. It's rich in these unsaturated fats, it's high in fiber, it has more plant protein than animal protein compared to the average diet today, and it's lower
ultra processed foods. And what that looks like in terms of diets that people might be familiar with, is anything from a Mediterranean diet done well. People might have heard of the Dash diet, which was this very plant based diet that has been used in research for lowering blood pressure and risk of cuttivascular disease. It could be a pescatarian diet, or it could be a whole food plant
based diet. All of the those diets that I just listed there, well, some of them are omnivorous and have animal foods, and certainly there is room for animal foods and healthy diet. It goes all the way to a whole food plant based diet that's plants exclusive. The commonality is the theme that I mentioned at the beginning, which is low saturated fat, rich and unsaturated fats, high fiber, a good amount of plant protein, and low and ultra
processed foods. And what all of those diets achieve through that theme is optimization of blood pressure, blood glucose control, cholesterol, inflammation, insolent sensitivity, all of these risk factors that we know are driving the cardiometabolic diseases and cancer, so cancers, fatty livid disease, type two diabetes, cardiabascar disease, dementia, all of the big chronic diseases that are robbing people of healthy
years of life are influenced by those risk factors. And when you eat in this manner, particularly over decades, you're optimizing those risk factors and dramatically lowering your risk. And so for me, as a heavy meat eater, it was kind of impossible to ignore that because meat is pulling you in the opposite direction, and dose is important. Like I said, you can have some meat in a plant rich diet and you're still optimizing all those factors that
I mentioned. But when meat is the star of the plate, particularly at every meat at every meal, particularly fatty cuts of meat like I was eating, and you're eating a lot of butter and high fat dairy, then you're increasing your cholesterol, you're reducing your impairing blood glucose control, you can increase inflammation. You see less diversity of the microbiome, which affects a myriad of risk factors as well. And so it was just learning that and understanding what a
healthy dietary pattern looks like. That provided a lot of food for thought for me, and I had to reflect on it, and I was very resistant. I didn't want to change at the beginning, and I think that if I hadn't had that experience with my dad, I don't think I would have made the changes in my twenties.
But I had a very strong reason to make changes and to improve these risk factors because I knew that my genes were probably stacked against me, and so I needed to do whatever I could to make sure that they weren't being expressed in a way where I was going to have a heart attack.
Well, I mean, coming back to that idea that not everyone does have that kind of why in built into their story. That does you know, create behavior change in a society where it's very difficult, Like if you live in one of the blue zones, it's not hard to eat that way because everyone's eating that way, and that's
what's available to you. If you had the ear of someone for sort of three key things that you could tell them about the way they're eating, that might shock some change into people's you know, coming back to that episode the food swap that could cut your risk of early death by seventeen percent? Firstly, what is that? And secondly, you know what a couple of other big changes you could begin with even that you know could have a dramatic improvement on your health.
So in terms of disease and chronic disease, the first thing I would make clear to people is it's not like these diseases just occur overnight. They are bubbling away under the surface for decades. You're in your twenties now, if you're eating a diet that's very high and saturated fat like I was, low in fiber, low and unsitrated fats, you are more than likely laying down plak fatty pluk in your arteries right, which is not just going to affect your heart, that's affecting blood flow to all organs
in your body, including your brain. And so the earlier you make changes, the healthier your arteries are going to be. So that's how I would just keep it very very simple. For someone it's not just someone who has genes like me that has a predisposition to cardiovascular disease. Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death in Australia for
men and women. So everyone is predisposed to it, and everyone dies with atherosclerosis, which is the build up of plaque in their arteri, but not everyone.
Dies because of it.
So let me say that again, everyone dies with it, but not everyone dies because of it. There is a natural progression of authorosclerosis as humans age, but you can limit the rate of that progression and how much plark is being laid down. You don't want to be walking around and going to bed every night and having significant amount of inflammation in the arteri wall and plaque building up.
That's predisposing you to having a heart attack or perhaps even worse a stroke from a physical impairment point of view. And so the biggest food swaps that someone can make, let's say the Australian diet, like what are the biggest leavers that people can focus on to look after their vascular health, but also would say is eat more fiber. And the average Australian is eating about twelve to fifteen grams of fiber per day, but that really should be
at thirty grams or higher. Now, fiber is found in all plant foods, and we are going into too much detail. It affects many of those risk factors that I reeled off before. But the really important thing to understand about about fiber and prebiotics in particular, probiotics is just a fancy way of saying compounds in your meals that you eat that are not absorbed in the small intestine, they pass through to the large intestine and they feed the
microbes the thirty eight trillion bactery in your gut. Those prebiotics vary from plant food to plant food to plant food, So the probiotics that are in broccoli are different to those in artochokes, are different again to those in potato, are different again to those that are in carrot. And one of the best predictors of gut health, which directly affects things like inforammation in cholesterol, is having a diversity
of plants in the diet. And there was a very big study called the Gut Health Microbiome Project a few years back that looked at the diversity of the microbiome in ten thousand plus subjects who sent in poop samples and also cataloged how they ate. It's a lot of poop, Yeah, it's a lot of poop, and also cataloged how these people were eating. The best predictor of a diverse microbiome was not whether someone was vegan, pescatarian, whatever. The dietary
label didn't matter. The best predictor was whether someone ate thirty unique plants a week or not. And so my number one piece of advice for this young person is increase your plant diversity. Forget about removing things right now, because by the time you increase your plant diversity and get up to thirty unique plants a week. And I encourage people to grab their journal or no pad and just see where you land next week, probably landing about
ten to twelve, I bet most people. And that's because we tend to eat the same plants every day.
I absolutely do that, right.
So you find and this is an order I have to do myself. I have to keep coming back to it because I go back to eating the same plant foods. But remember these plant foods. Although we like to simplify fiber as one thing, it's not like. There are many different types of prebiotics and they're feeding different type species of bacteria, all of which have different and very important roles in our gut. So you can do an order, see how many unique plants you have, and then try
and increase over time. You can do this over weeks and months, try and get up to eating thirty unique plants a week, and that's going to do wonders for
your microbiome. Fire has other effects beyond the microbiome that are going to be beneficial, and at the same time, I bet by adding all of those in, you end up eating a little bit less animal foods, and so saturated fat comes down, and the type of plant foods I'm talking about are whole or minimally processed, so fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, whole grains, and by version of that, you eat a little.
Less ultra processed foods.
So just focusing on that one thing can really straighten up the diet and optimize a number of these really important risk factors without having to think about too much.
I love that it kind of has flow and effects without you actually having to focus on three different goals. It's like, do this and by nature of try to introduce that many things, you'll kind of you end up with all these other benefits. What about some and this must be particularly as someone with as much sort of depth of research, with deep qualifications, but also really a long long history of working with experts and engaging deeply
with the science. What are some of the biggest and most frustrating misconceptions that you see in the landscape at the moment.
I think you mentioned at the outset that there there's a lot of conflicting information on social media, and you also use the word context, and those are two really
important words. So what frustrates me is that I believe many people, thanks to social media and the type of information that is on social media about nutrition, I kind of left in this position where they think that there's a lot of conflicting information in nutrition science and it's sort of all over the place, and scientists just haven't worked this out, and so I end up just kind of throwing their hands up in the air and thinking, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing because
everyone's arguing, right, and I actually understand and empathize with them, and I don't blame you, like if you're in that position, I get it. That's why I went back and did my masters, because I was in that position. Even with an undergraduate degree that involves science learning how to read peer reviewed literature, I didn't have the specific skills to
make sense of nutrition science. And so the one thing that I would say to that person is that while it seems like all the information is conflicting, it only seems that way because the context is missing, and so it's very easy for me to go and find a study and say study show And that's why you see everyone saying study show, study show, study show, study show about all these these things that people are saying are completely contradictory. How can studies show things that are the
exact opposite, right? And the reason is because the context is missing. Who are we talking about? Are we talking about a twenty five year old athlete? Are we talking about a postmenopausal woman? What food are we talking about? Are we talking about red meat? What type of red meat are we talking about? What dose are you talking about?
Because like red meat, what does that actually mean? Are you talking about someone that's eating thirty grams a day or we're talking about someone that's eating eighty grams a day or one hundred and fifty grams a day. And also nutrition is a little different other areas of science,
particularly from a place Ebo perspective. When you are trying to determine the effect of a food, let's say red meat, you have to compare it to something so compared to what are you comparing red meat to ultra processed foods? Are you comparing red meat to whole grains. Are you comparing red meat to legumes? And now all of a sudden, and there's way more than that. I hope the listener understands, like, there's really important context. And when you understand that context,
these studies that seem contradictory, they're not actually contradictory. It's actually quite easily explained. So I think that's the most frustrating thing that I would say is just that social media. You alluded to it earlier. It's all about the clickbait. How much emotion can you kind of generate in a twenty or thirty second clip, And often that doesn't lend itself well to a more nuanced position that contains the context, and it leads to the absolute or sensational kind of
position is what gets shared and amplified. And this is like an extension of what frustrates me is that I think as a society we're losing track of what science is and what it means to communicate science objectively and effectively. And so when I'm looking for someone who is a science communicator that I'm going to trust, it's not the person who is using absolute language. I want to hear the person who understands their limits, what we do know, what we don't know. I want to hear a little
bit of hesitation. I want to hear them say I don't know. Words I think need to be repopularized, right because science fundamentally requires a ton of humility, and so it's frustrating for me to see sort of deep convictions, often from people who are not directly in the science field, and I think the public conflates that conviction with credibility, whereas for me, credibility is.
As I mentioned, is a little bit you know.
I'm looking for that person who says words like perhaps or maybe or but we need to consider this context and adding caveats, And that's not as sexy and probably isn't going to go as viral in the podcast world or in the reels, but it's actually it's just more responsible.
That's how science should be.
And that leads really nicely into my next question, which is also kind of more relevant in the social media age, where people want absolutes and they want clickbaiting sentences without context that are sexy, and part of that is an immense pressure, I think to never change your mind like you've been on social media as long as I've been on social media, and not only have we changed and the world's changed, the nature of science is that it changes.
Like yes, it operates in absolutes in the moment, but I mean our unders standing of life over the course of all of science has gone from whole opposite conclusions because our technology advances, because the way we understand. You know, there's so many reasons why things change. Have you felt pressure in a world where you have a million followers? That is an enormous amount of people who are listening
very closely to everything you do. Have you ever felt pressure to not change your mind on something to be the same person over the history of your lifetime on social media? And has there been anything that you've changed your mind on or that science has changed its mind on that you've had to kind of learn to deliver that too to your audience.
I've definitely changed my mind on quite a few things. We can get into that. But I agree with you again, I think that changing your mind for some people that might be seen as this person is foot flopping or doesn't know their stuff right, and it could be seen as as like a weakness rather than being a strength for someone. But I think it's it is a strength.
Now, you don't want to see someone flip flopping day to day because the science in the sensus is not changing day to day and our consensus and sort of understanding of science. But in this case nutrition science, there is course corrections, but it's shaped over years and decades. So it is very rare that all of a sudden you wake up and everything's slipped on its head, and you know, we learn tomorrow that the best diet is just eating salami.
That's a little bit of a red flag. Now.
Sure, there are things like over the last ten years where I've changed my mind, and some of it's been a slow progression where a study comes out.
And you're like, huh, that's actually interesting, it's.
Making me think about this in another way, And then another study comes in, another study, and I'd say dairy is one of those, because over the last five years there's been quite a few publications suggesting that at least when you remove butter from that, because you've got to remember, dairy is such a diverse range of foods, Like what
does that actually mean? Because it's everything from butter to ice ice cream with lots of refined sugars to Greek yogurt, to fermented types of dairy which have probiotics, live cultures, you know, very different. Again, and when researchers have got a little bit more granular and instead of just analyzing dairy as a kind of big umbrella group, you see that certainly well, butter, at least compared to oils like
olive oil, increases risk CUTI of ascular disease. So I think that's another swap that people could make as simple one is eat a little less butter a little more Olive oil particularly have high cholesterol. What we've been able to see is that yogurt and cheese, particularly fermented cheese,
actually associates with improvements in cardiovascular health. So a little bit of nuance that I guess I've added over the years is that not all dairy is the same, and even the saturated fats that exist in dairy do not behave the same as saturated fats in red meat. And so I just sort of simplified it earlier saying we want to eat less saturated fat, and if we wanted to double click on that, I'm conscious of time, but saturated fat is actually not one thing, just like fiber.
It's saturated fats. There are different types and they have different effects on physiology, and the real saturated fats that you want to reduce are the ones in red meat or in butter. And you might be thinking, well, how can the saturated fats in butter be different to yoga
and cheese. It's very simple. When you refine the dairy down, you bust open what's called a milk fat globule, and that milk fat globule sort of liberates the saturated fats in dairy, and so they have this much more amplified effect on cholesterol, whereas in yogurt and in cheese, where they're not as refined, the milk fat globule remains intact and it limits the effect that saturated fat has on cholesterol.
So while you know, ten years ago, a lot of people just looking at the nutritional profile of yogurt and cheese would have a hypothesis that this is going to really jack up cholesterol, doesn't actually seem to play out like that, And in large population studies, those two types of dairy seem to be either neutral or positive for cardiovascular health. That's something where I've changed my view over the years. And that's not saying that you have to
consume dairy. Someone might be like to its intolerant or just choose not to consume dairy for ethical or environmental reasons, which are are valid. But you then would want to really focus on what are you consuming instead, And so dairy it's a great source of protein, it's a really good source of calcium, and probably the effects on cardiovascular
health are because of calcium. So if you're someone who is a avoiding yogurt, is avoiding cheese, you want to make sure that the replacement foods you're consuming have a similar amount of calcium, or else you're getting enough calcium somewhere else in the diet. You wouldn't want to be not consuming dairy and then under consuming your daily amount of calcium, if that makes sense.
So the replacement, the replacement matters somewhere else.
I've changed my mind a little bit is ultra processed foods and the way in which they are affecting disease. So there's been a lot of research over the last kind of decade, but particularly in the last five years, and I've had some of these scientists on my show trying to really unravel like what is it about ultra processed foods that is driving obesity? Because we know that people who eat more ultra processed foods tend to be overweight or obese, or have a higher risk of being
overweight or obese. And there's been all these different kind of hypotheses out there looking at this, and you know, people have speculated maybe it's like the amount of sugar
or fat or sodium in these foods. And there was some really interesting work done by Kevin Hole about five years ago now where he compared in metabolic ward bringing people into a you know, essentially like a prison but a hospital setting, whether you feed people food and you know everything they eat and you can do all the measurements there, whereas you know, when you conduct these studies at home and they're free living, it's a little bit hard relying on people doing exactly what you say.
And reporting it correctly.
Yeah, this is like a very controlled study. You know exactly what people are eating. And he had he had two diets, this ultra processed diet and this unprocessed diet, but they were matched for all of those things that I just mentioned, like protein and fiber and salt and sugar, okay, so only difference that some of these foods were ultra
processed and the others were unprocessed. And for about two weeks they had every participant eat the unprocessed foods and then have a little bit of a break and then eat the ultra processed foods or in the opposite order, so every participant got to do both diets, and the instructions were just to eat until you're full. And what they found was despite matching all of those macronutrients and sodium and fiber, people ate about five hundred calories.
More per day on the ultra processed diet.
So then that kind of leaves you wondering, well, what's driving this, and so the hypothesis from that was that it's probably calorie density, so the amount of calories per bite, which affects your eating rate, how fast you can eat something.
And this was like building on other research done by Barbara Rolls, who has been in this space for ten or twenty years, so I need to make because of her work kind of really paved the way for this, but there's been subsequence studies now that have again kind of really confirmed that probably ultra processed foods are driving
excessive calorie consumption. Certainly by hyperpalatability, we know that they kind of hijack the reward centers of the brain because they're just overly delicious, but also by calorie density and eating rate. And there's this interesting sort of thing where we all tend to eat the same amount of food by volume per day, right, but a kilogram of food can be vastly different amount of calories depending on how energy dense that food is.
Yeah, okay, so the volume is what's consistent, but the calorie density is what varies.
Yes, And this has been borne out in many studies now, so we can use this again. It doesn't really change any of the advice set that we're giving here, because it's why those dietary patterns. One of the reasons why that I reeled off before Mediterranean dash, pescatarian, whole food,
plant based. It's one of the reasons why time and time again you see people eating that way are healthy, body healthier body weight, because when you eat more of those high fiber, high water plant foods, those are low calorie density foods, it lowers the total calorie density of your overall dietary pattern. So when you eat a kilogram of food, it contains less calories than if you're eating a kilogram of food that was animal foods and ultra processed.
Right. So it's also like a satiation kind of measurement, like what satisfies your hunger? Hunger?
Right, it's absolutely satiety related.
Oh, that's the one satiation. Society is a better word.
Yes, you're right, though, you're absolutely right. So there are stretch receptors in your gut. So when you eat food that is less calorie dense, if I give you five hundred calories of food that's less calorie dense than say five hundred calories superclori dense, that's going to be a larger volume of food. It's going to stretch your stomach more, and it activates these stretch receptors which send a signal to your brain saying, hey, we're pretty good down here.
You don't need to bring in any more calories.
Yeah, minor a bit diluted. They're a bit de lulu mine down there.
And can I just add one little thing here because I think it's a neat tip, and it's from Barbaraoll's work. She was really interested in this idea of energy density, and she was the researcher responsible for what's called the
preload strategy. So if someone's wanting to lose weight to lower their risk of chronic disease or for whatever reason, it is a really helpful strategy is before you eat your main meal, to eat a water based sort of broth based soup or a large salad, providing that salad doesn't have a whole lot of energy dense salad dressing on it. And in her studies, when they preloaded people with either the soup or the salad, they ended up eating fifteen to twenty percent less calories over that entire
meal sitting, so including the preload. And it's likely because it's activating those stretch receptors earlier in the meal.
Oh, that's such a good tip. I've actually heard that before. And also it's partly related to the timing, is that right, Like, it takes twenty minutes for the messages of those stretch receptors to get back to your brain. So it's like if you gobble like I do and eat so quickly, that's why you overeat because you don't give yourself time to realize the volume that's actually already in your stomach. Like, give it a minute.
Yeah, that's one dredsent true. And I mean that's why ultra process foods are you super energy dense? You know we've all done it before. You can quickly take down you know, five hundred and seven hundred calories without even knowing it. And also why if you're sitting in front of the TV, you know, before you know it, you've
scoffed down so much food. And there are a lot of researchers looking at exactly that and looking at mindful eating and slowing down and chewing slowly, and it is likely to lead to better appetite regulation.
For sure, I knew I would get to this point in the episode. I even began with knowing that my biggest challenge today was distilling all of your wisdom and everything I wanted to ask you. I feel like I've covered like, not even one percent of all the things in our brain. So it's lucky that our listeners can go to your own podcast and get three hundred and sixty more episodes of wisdom from you and your incredible guests.
But if you did have to distill say three swaps or practical tips that people could start with, now, what would you leave us with on top of what you've already so generously given us, but in like a SoundBite.
Okay, before I give you the SoundBite, because I know that sometimes these conversations can be a little anxiety provoking for people focusing on food so much. I just want to make it clear. This is about doing it in perfectly over decades, so the things that I say, it's not about getting it perfect every single day. And if you do fall off the bandwagon on a day, no worries, it doesn't matter. Just do your best in the next food decision that you have the next day, and you're
going to be fine. So I would say Number one is focus on the thirty unique plants? Can you get there? How many unique plants? So are you currently eating? Do a bit of an order and see if you can work your way up towards thirty unique plants. And I didn't mention this before, but herbs and spices count oh nice. So it can seem a little daunting at the beginning,
but that makes it a little bit easier. Number two, for a swap, as I mentioned, would be swapping out cooking oils, cooking fats that are really rich and saturated fats, particularly butter or ghee, even coconut oil and palm oil, and instead cooking with olive oil or avocado oil or god forbid, seed oles, which I know are much maligned. And maybe that's another episode.
Yeah, you have an episode on that. Actually I've saved it for later.
I have an episode on that, so people can go and check that out. But if we want to just avoid arguments, swap those saturated fat rich googn oils for olive oil, which is almost universally accepted as a healthy cooking oil, or avocado oil. So that would be the first two and the third would just be about being conscious of ultra processed foods. So there is room for ultra processed foods in the diet. The main mechanism by which ultra processed foods are causing disease, as I mentioned,
is through driving excess calorie consumption. So really, if someone's overweight or obese, then these are things that you might want to pay a little more attention to. But if you're metabolically healthy, you don't have chronic disease, you're active, and ninety five percent of the time you're eating whole minimally processed foods.
You know, a little bit of these ultra processed foods, having some ice cream here and there and whatnot, it's not going to kill you. And so yeah, overall, sixty percent of Austrain's calories coming from ultra processed foods, so across the board we can benefit massively by reducing them. But they're not toxic at any dose. So I just want people to know.
That when you fall off, and I'm hoping that your answer is that you do occasionally, what are your guilty pleasures everything, Well, that's good to know. That's very humanizing.
And yeah, I do.
I certainly do fall off, and I've gone through periods, to be completely honest with you, where I've probably do well in a little bit of regret or shame or guilt and being too focused on having the perfect diet. And it's not worth the anxiety that comes along with that. I think, I think chasing perfection is just impossible when it comes to our diet, and so it sort of sets us up for failure. And the problem with that is when perfection is a goal and you don't meet it,
that's when people just stop altogether and give up. So having this approach of just doing it imperfectly. It allows you to be human. It allows you to be human. Right, So for me, cookies, cakes, you know Brownie's ice cream cakes?
Love those?
Well, you're a sweet too.
Yeah, anything sweet. You know, chocolate and you know a little bit of chocolate's completely fine. But I can easily house way too much chocolate.
House you can house so much stretch factor.
Yeah, I just like everyone listening.
I have my vices, and you know, I don't get it perfect every day, but you know, the foundations of my dieta there, and I'm not bashing myself up so much these days.
Oh that's good tonight. Oh my god, I couple of if I've left out so much. I don't even talk. We haven't talked about Center. We haven't talked. Maybe we have to do a follow up episode. But just the last question anytime you're in La, I love that. The occasional word. I'm like, oh, he's been there a long time. There's an American Twain coming through. Just a few words. What's next? Like do you come home? Are you going to come home? Or is home La? What's next for
the proof you're going to be based there? Yeah, what's up? What's happening.
What's next is probably Madison Square Garden and I'll be there sewing that out home and this will sound corny.
Is where my partner is.
She's Californian, so it's true, and that's probably why I've picked up some American twain from spending so much time with her.
Do you hear it or is it just us?
Yeah? I'm aware. I'm aware.
Like even when I say I'm aware, you aware. The hours on water are like getting stronger and stronger. And my dad has lived now in America, so in my defense and I know over time, But in my defense, I.
Lived in America from two till ten.
Oh wow, so first accent I had. Yeah, so we've left Melbourne. My dad did his post doc in Texas and then Virginia. He was an assistant professor in Virginia, so I learned to speak in Texas. So, believe it or not. Oh, I had a Southern American accent from two till ten that I came back to Australia.
I lost it because I wanted to fit in and.
You wanted to sell records. I mean obviously, yeah.
Now things are creeping back in, but I am trying to maintain my Australian Accent podcast.
I'm at three hundred and sixty episodes.
For me, it's aboutntinuing to find the academics in particular that don't have a platform, that are kind of hidden away at these conferences talking about fatty liver disease and diabetes, and it's really arms length from you and from eye, and I love sitting down and often for the first time, and like their family members will send me emails or messages because they didn't really understand what their dad or
mum did for the past thirty or forty years. So it's a nice way to act as a bit of a tribute to them and their family, but also take the incredible amount of information they have and share it with people and just continue, I guess, to try and be a quality scientific voice in this space, you know, online, where there's a lot of misinformation and a lot of confusion that I think needs clearing up, just to help people feel a little more confident with all of these decisions they're making.
Absolutely doing that, I mean, forty million downloads and counting is extraordinary and as I said a couple of times, you are uniquely able to package up information that is not accessible to the average young, instagratuitous mind and make it powerful and impactful. So you're doing wonderful, wonderful things and will continue to follow along keenly. But just to finish up, do you have a favorite quote?
Oh? Favorite quote?
I love Ritual's quote at the moment, which is very simple and that is mood follows action.
Ooh, mood follows action.
That's deep.
I love rich I love him too. Yeah.
I will also include a link to your episode on his podcast. When was that?
I've been on his show a few times, so twenty twenty one, I think, and then twenty twenty four.
All right, what an amazing way to finish, Simon, Thank you so much. I'll include links to everything in the show notes for our listeners. If you don't already know Simon, but I think most of you probably will, you can go there to find out more. Thank you so much for joining.
Thank you, Sarah, appreciate it.
You guys know, I love speaking to people about things that they love, and I could just feel how excited Simon gets about the science of living well and wanting to convey that to us all, and he truly does so in such an impactful and accessible way, even when the science behind what he's saying is complicated or voluminous, or as he said, sometimes it can appear conflicting. He's just got such a talent for making it accessible to
the everyday person. And I'll include links to all his platforms, his book, his master classes in the show notes in case you haven't already devoured everything that he's created. I'm guessing that some of you already have, but hopefully you learn something new in this episode. If you did enjoy, took something away, or even have further questions for him, please share and tag Simon It's at Simon Hill to
thank him for his time. It truly means so much to help growing our show and yighborhood as far and wide as possible, even seven or eight years in which is absolutely wild. It was nice to reflect with Simon on how long we've both been doing this and that we still get to be here having these wonderful conversations. So thank you to you guys all as well for following along. In the meantime, I hope you're having a wonderful week and are seizing your yay