Gene Eating: The Story of Human Appetite

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On the positive side, he does a good job debunking various fad diets, which is potentially useful for people who have been duped to believe dumb shit like that gluten is evil or that eating lemons will raise your blood pH. But again, nothing new there. First, put together a strategy to expose yourself less to foods that you have a particular weakness for, so is you love chocolate, maybe have less of that lying around your house,” he advises. And so whilst reading these first three chapters I did wonder who these were written for: People with an understanding of these very complex workings will already know all there is to know, but for the aforementioned casual readers it will all sound way too complex to follow and probably too alienating to keep going with the book. On the contrary, he endorses intermittent fasting and the Mediterranean diet, which is widely considered one of the healthiest in the world. The Mediterranean diet includes relatively high consumption of fruits and vegetables, olive oil, grains, legumes and nuts, moderate consumption of fish and poultry, as well as red wine, and low consumption of diary products and red and processed meat. It has been linked to reduced risk for cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancer, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, and increased longevity.

Research, including twin studies, has demonstrated the substantial role of genetics in body weight. Identical twins, who share 100% of their genes, exhibit greater concordance in body weight compared to non-identical twins who share only 50% of their genes. Heritability estimates for weight, height, and BMI have ranged from 40% to 70%. This means that genetics explain 40% to 70% of the variation in body weight, while environmental factors account for the remainder. So, while it is not solely about genes, they play a substantial role in our body weight and should not be dismissed. Even within the world of ultra-processed foods, there are better choices to be made, however. Choosing a 240-calorie chocolate bar high in fibre and protein – one that includes dried fruits and nuts, for example – is a better choice than a 240-calorie bar that is low in protein and fibre. In his new book, Why Calories Don’t Count: How We Got the Science of Weight Loss Wrong, Dr Yeo takes up the baton to modernise how we look at calories, with significant implications for our diets and, ultimately, our health. I have, however, changed my eating behaviour as a result of this experiment. While I missed meat too much to give it up entirely, I have become a ‘flexitarian’, whereby I am vegan during weekday lunches and at least twice a week in the evenings. I have probably cut my meat intake by 40 per cent. For me, this dietary change seems sustainable, and I have, thus far, managed to maintain the lighter me for the past 10 months. I’m lactose intolerant which means I can have cheese (which is lower in lactose than milk), but cannot drink a lot of milk. So dairy was never a big thing for me.I had been eagerly anticipating this book being published for some time, so was delighted to be able to read an advance copy. In addition, there were also well-catalogued issues with micronutrient deficiencies in vegan diets to consider; in particular vitamin B12, which is found largely in animal-based products, as well as iodine. Vitamin B12 is fat soluble, so I figured I had enough stored around my belly to easily last me the month; and I happened to like seaweed, which is rich in iodine. Hence I made the decision not to take supplements. I was weighed and had some limited blood biochemistry measurements (glucose and cholesterol levels, and micronutrients) performed before and after. A difficult first week Part of this, in very practical terms, is taking steps to keep away from the foods we know we cannot control. “To take a personal, very facetious, example,” Yeo says, “I am not allowed to bring chocolate into the house. I can buy it and have one square, but I will stop at that. If my wife knows there is chocolate around, however, she will eat it all. Now, if there are pork scratchings in the house, for me that is a different story…” Privilege comes in 3 forms, money, time and information. And all 3 contribute to make it easier for those with privilege to eat well, eat the right amount, and have enough time to prepare nutritious food. As he and his fellow researchers began to understand more about how the brain failed to control food intake in extreme cases, they started to see how the disruption of those regular pathways was not unique to severely obese people. There was a spectrum. Yeo left pure genetics and became an accidental neuroscientist. His principal interest is now the genetics of how the brain controls food intake.

He believes everyone should at least try it, if only to stop being afraid of eating vegan. With the help of his cycling, Yeo has managed to return to his “vegan weight”. But more importantly he now knows he can eat vegan and cook vegan when he wants. As a result he has reduced his meat intake by about half. According to Dr Yeo, when the American chemist Wilbur Atwater first measured the calories contained in foods in 1900 – “painstakingly feeding humans and then burning their poop” using a bomb calorimeter – he did not take into account a crucial factor: caloric availability, specifically the heat given off during metabolism. Two things: if you want to lose weight you need a diet to suit your particular lifestyle and your weaknesses. The other thing is: never fear food. Love it, but don’t eat quite as much of it as you want.” Not everyone is going to look like a magazine cover model, whose smothered in makeup, likely heavily photoshopped, generally unhappy with sub 10% bodyfat, probably taking Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) (aka steroids), etc. Stop comparing yourself to "stars", social media, movie stars, and unrealistic body images. Do the best you can with what you got within reason. Enjoy life. Exercise. Eat right. Reduce body fat. I say again, enjoy life and not obsess about body image. Yeo tends to lecture without shoes on, which helps his undergraduates remember him, he suggests. “That barefoot guy with no hair, talking about diabetes.” He has the look of a guru, but resists the idea of gurus. He prefers to be directed by the complexities of the science. A bit of his experimentation is on himself. For a recent series of the BBC’s Trust Me, I’m a Doctor on which he is a presenter, he ate vegan for a month. A couple of things happened: he lost about 10lbs and his blood cholesterol levels dropped dramatically.In an age of misinformation and pseudo-science, the world is getting fatter and the diet makers are getting richer. So how do we break this cycle that's killing us all? The book is called "Gene Eating." The author is a geneticist from a world-renowned university. The book cover shows a pear made out of double helices. I thought maybe, just maybe, this book was going to be about genetics. We live in an era of large-scale genetic + genomic analyses, with high throughput sequencing and enormous sample sizes, and I thought the author was going to provide us with a more in-depth understanding of the interaction between diet/nutrition and genetics.