Dr Sarah Berry: Nutrition scientist and professor at King's College London with 25 years of research, and Chief Scientist at ZOE. Her work focuses on the 'food matrix,' cardiometabolic health, and large-scale nutrition trials like ZOE PREDICT.
What this episode covers
Dr Sarah Berry explains the 'food matrix', how a food's physical structure, not just its nutrient label, determines how your body processes it, using nuts, oats and apples as examples. She covers how eating speed, chewing, and meal timing affect calorie intake, fullness and belly fat, including why snacking after 9pm is harmful even for healthy snacks. A large section debunks nutrition misinformation ('nutribollocks'), most notably the claim that seed oils are toxic, plus myths around dairy, saturated fat, cholesterol and fad diets. She closes with the menopause: its wide-ranging metabolic effects, the rise of 'menowashing' supplements, and evidence that a healthier diet can reduce symptoms by around a third.
Recommended on this episode
Yorkshire Tea
Taylors of Harrogate
“I could call this a menopause tea it's actually Yorkshire Tea and it's a very good cup of tea”— Dr Sarah Berry
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
Pringles
Kellanova
“there's certain foods that I used to eat like like Pringles and snacks and crisps and things like that”— Steven Bartlett
Big reveals from this episode
- States flatly there is no credible evidence seed oils are harmful, they are actually beneficial.
- Discloses her almond snack study was funded by the Almond Board of California, while defending its independence.
- Explains the Sydney Diet Heart Study against seed oils is flawed because the oils then contained harmful trans fats.
- Coins 'menowashing', slap 'meno' on any product and charge 10x; holds up Yorkshire Tea as the joke example.
- Says soy isoflavones are the only supplement with even weak evidence for menopause symptoms.
- Defends scientists working with the food industry, arguing the anti-industry narrative is creating a climate of fear.
- Reveals her proudest achievement is the four years she spent caring for her dying mother, not becoming a professor.
Worth remembering
- Changing your eating speed by 20% cuts calorie intake by about 15%.
- You excrete 20-30% of the calories from whole nuts because intact cell walls trap the fat undigested.
- Finely ground oats produce roughly a 50% higher blood-glucose response than coarse oats with identical nutrients.
- Swapping 20% of energy from typical UK snacks to almonds improved blood vessel function equal to a 30% drop in cardiovascular disease in six weeks.
- About 25% of UK and US energy comes from snacks, and roughly 75% of those snacks are unhealthy.
- 30% of people snack after 9pm, which is linked to more belly fat and inflammation even with healthy snacks.
- Cheese does not raise cholesterol but butter does, despite near-identical fat composition, due to the food matrix.
- Postmenopausal women have a fivefold higher risk of heart attack and their LDL cholesterol rises about 25%.
- Hot flushes affect only about 40% of women, while around 85% report brain fog, the opposite of public perception.
- In China people eat ~70mg of soy isoflavones a day versus ~1mg in the UK/US, tracking with lower menopause symptoms.